When my dad woke up after his surgery, he needed to say something to the nurse. But for some reason the nurse didn't understand him! It was a little strange but then a second nurse arrived. That nurse couldn't understand either. Eventually a third nurse arrived who, with great difficulty, did understand my dad. He didn't realize that he was talking in a peculiar mixture of Spanish, English, Finnish and Swedish. It took a nurse who could understand all those languages to get what my dad was trying to say. 😄He did eventually start talking normally.
@@henryspiers8578oh god it would be a nightmare to wake me up from a coma, Swedish english German Romanian and I’d probably throw in Spanish words and maybe even Latin if I forget a word in the other languages. Yea it wouldn’t be fun but at least I’m not fluent in German and Romanian and under.
I think he actually learned it better than he consciously thought he had in high school. I think the part of his brain that spoke English interfered with the part of his brain that spoke Mandarin. That's why he wasn't that fluent in it. Upon awakening from a coma however he couldn't retrieve the English language from that part of his brain. He could retrieve the Mandarin language. The part of his brain that spoke English was not interfering with the part that spoke Mandarin. Therefore he sounded fairly fluent in Mandarin.
I think we're very good at storing at lot of information but not so good at recovering it. For example, there are many things that I've forgotten that I'm able to recall if I see a photo, hear a song, go to a particular place or hear a name.
@@koriandr7731 perhaps he was exposed to a lot of mandarin during the basic fluency class but only consciously learned a little bit of it, like the above comment said. I think this to be reasonably possible based on my own experience learning mandarin. After all, when learning a new language, you often can understand much better before u can speak!
I woke up speaking fluent Turkish after dating a Turkish man, maybe I picked it up after hearing him speak to his mother on the phone. It happened several times, but I didn't know what I was saying at all. I couldn't remember any Turkish upon waking up. I still don't, but he said my conversations in the middle of the night were perfect. Subconscious mind is a interesting place.
Wow, that's crazy! You're right about the subconscious mind. So mysterious... it's like we have a possibly super genius capacity in our brains that picks up on everything in a way that can't be retained or used consciously -- same as how your subconscious mind must have picked up on the Turkish language, its context, structure, grammar, and all that over time and connected it in a way that made sense while your concious mind still couldn't understand it. Kind of reminds me of a movie with Bradley Cooper called "Limitless" or something, where a special pill allowed him to use his brain to the fullest extent, gathering, learning, retaining, and calculating everything super quickly.
Yeah me too. I lived in korea for a short period and speak a little korean. One night i dreamed about talking to my korean friends.they all speak fluent korean in my dream. Seems so real. I couldnt event construct one single sentence.
There is a woman who worked at Walmart and has 4 kids, her mom dreamed up the numbers and gave her the lotto ticket and bam she won 188 million dollars. She doesn't know how to say no and spends spends spends and has already bailed out her drug dealing boyfriend out of jail 3 times which cost her 22 million. What I'm trying to get at is God or whoever whatever decides the money fate simply just doesn't give a fuck who it is and what they'll do with it. If it ain't a dummy it's and old couple who still want to go to work everyday lol.
Guys, it's not that he just learned it, it's the fact that his brain switched the default language to Mandarin, so he thought in Mandarin as if it was his native language.
This is nothing I remember when my Girlfriend's father kicked me in the balls I could speak several languages but it was for a short period of time because as the pain started fading away my ability to speak several languages started fading away too.
The interesting part is that his brain prioritized Mandarin as his native language. When this happens I'm sure you'll learn even faster. This needs to be studied imo.
Woven Spade, you know what, after snooping through your page I realized I will be arguing with a nine year old. So go on with your life kid. Good bye.
I think its really suspicious that he woke up speaking it and writing it. Honestly, I think he spoke it decently before he was in a coma. At most, the coma helped him pull it all together and learn quickly. I learn languages all the time and with every language you eventually hit this point where all of a sudden the language just starts to click in your head. And then you just become a sponge for vocabulary and all of the rules just start to make sense...for me what he described sounds like its just that.
+jimmellecarnegie No, he learnt it to a basic level in high school. Then when he was in a coma you usually get looked after by 2 nurses (rotating 12 hours), 1 of the nurses looking after him probably spoke in Mandarin and watched Mandarin shows while he was in the coma which would of triggered in it his head. So when he woke up and saw the Chinese lady after he was exposed to that Mandarin it was natural for his brain to use it. He didn't wake up fluent though. I'm pretty sure he's the host of LearnChineseNow, so now he's fluent.
+jimmellecarnegie He learned plenty of the language as a high school student, but I think that small amount of brain damage (plus, as THISGUY said, a Mandarin-speaking nurse) turned Mandarin into his default language when he woke up. I've reached the level in Mandarin in which I think this could happen to me if I were to suddenly find myself in a Mandarin-speaking household; you can suddenly piece it all together and understand it.
I was looking for some explanation of this thing on the internet, but this case is not what I expected. This guy already knew some Mandarin, and had Chinese speaking nurses. I have a real case , a Turkish woman, goes into coma, no background of the language, no nurses no bs, she starts speaking ukranian (russian) all of a sudden, and she is fluent.
This guy is a comical genius! We were roomies in Beijing during the 2012 hanyu qiao competition and take it from me, this guy is a true inspiration to all other foreign Chinese students...good on you, Ben!
So, throughout the entire video, it really only shows him saying, "kafei lai le" (coffee has arrived). Why would you have a video like this and have the entirety of it consist of him speaking only English?
Michael M Oh yea, not saying he's not likable. The claim is he woke up and was able to speak Mandarin, but the only thing he says in Mandarin is something you'd learn on maybe your second day of learning the language.
Miaoyun h Nah, I'm embarrassed though. I don't know how I made this happen but I guess I didn't get to the point where it shows him on the TV show. I had Chinese roommates for several years and have been to China several times, so I understand most of it. I guess I just had ADD that day. Something.
How the brain handles multiple languages is super cool. I've been learning American Sign Language for 8 years, and once I went to college and was taking ASL classes there, it got very intense. Classes would be 2-3 hours long, completely immersive. No speaking, only sign language. Once class was over, it was sometimes hard to switch back to speaking English. Once I made to to ASL 4 and 5 at the college level, I started occasionally having dreams entirely in ASL, which is a crazy experience! It's amazing how much your brain picks up when you aren't paying attention, even as an adult. I've since started learning Danish as well, and have added music in Danish to my phone so I can listen to it on the way to work, which has definitely helped my vocabulary and listening comprehension. Dexter wasn't too far off listening to his French tapes in his sleep. After all, he did learn "omelette du fromage".
It's been pretty good so far! I've been learning on Duolingo for about 2 years, but I haven't been very consistent, so I feel like I haven't progressed as much as I could have if I'd stuck with it all the way. I'm starting to feel comfortable creating original sentences, but I can still only talk about basics, like introducing myself and using simple verbs and adjectives to talk about animals, food, and other people. Jeg elsker dansk, det er en smukt sprog!
He studied Mandarin in Australia and went to China after that. He was in the China matchmaking show ’非诚勿扰‘。So I call him BS. He is hungry for media attention.
Dude... I could very well get a whole news crew to my house and tell them that I woke up from a coma speaking English... it's nothing special that he can speak chinese after a coma given that he has learnt it before, as many people do regain their cognitive abilities after a coma.
If the guy had had no exposure to Mandarin, then this would be a story of note. But since he actually studied Mandarin, there's no big mystery. Either he is faking the sudden fluency (He was already fluent), or something happened in his brain - for example, a stroke - that opened up the pathways and just brought what he had learned (and thought forgotten) to the forefront.
Ahh yes finally found the expert in the comments. Sure, happens all the time that someone wakes up from a coma and is suddenly fluent in a language that they only could stutter some basic sentences in before. Or it must have all been faked, of course. Internet superheroes!
I actually had a similar experience with this after a surgery. I woke up speaking Japanese to the nurse next to me, who spoke English, Japanese, and French. I have been studying Japanese for a while now, but I haven't been able to speak that well ever since. Someone should really do a study on this. Maybe we can learn how to alter people's internal dialogue to equal it to their native language by putting them under anesthesia for a short period of time, and when they awake, only introducing them to a native speaker of the language they are learning for a while, so that they can possible switch their internal dialogue, temporarily.
I believe that this phenomena has something to do with past lives, as we haven't always returned as people of the same ethnicity, we have had lives as other ethnic groups, and as different sexes; and of various other life forms. All previous lives lived leave an impression on the soul, somehow the person inadvertently accessed that information from his soul during his coma
Mandarin is like the hardest langauge to learn, ive been speaking it at home and with relatives all my life but my proficiency is still like that of someone in grade school. I find German so much easier and speak it like a native speaker. Amazing how this kid is able to pick it up so quickly. All the tones in Mandarin sounds the same so only 4 tones it total, thus it its sort of like speaking in binary. Even a character with one tone can mean many different things >.
It'a far from being the only tone language coupled to the fact that there's no grammar to speak of, most words are 1 syllable, verb tenses don't change, there is no masculine, feminine, verbs never change endings all make Mandarin and other forms of Chinese fairly easy languages to learn. What complicates the language is the writing system. With Pinyin ( Romanized script for writing Chinese) it becomes one of the easiest languages to learn. If you check for the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers, Chinese in any of it's forms, never makes the list.
@@jaimekaimero2912coming from a tonal Sino Tibetan language speaker Chinese doesn't sound difficult to my ear. Cuz I speak two tonal languages and have been hearing tonal all my life so it's pretty basic for tonal add speakers to be able to differentiate tones
This report is unfortunately lacking in that it isn't clear on whether there was a sudden jump in his mandarin skills after the accident. That is extremely important.
OH MY GOSH! I ran into him at the airport in indonesia a long time ago and I just saw this video now. He was calling someone and speaking mandarin and I couldn't help but take notice of him. and then he dropped something and I gave it to him asdfjlkl wow
The title's kinda misleading. He was already at basic fluency before the coma, but temporarily had amnesia so he couldn't speak English, but only Mandarin. I thought it was more like he only knew a little bit of Mandarin and was then able to speak it fluently, but that wasn't the case. Still kinda interesting I guess, but not as surprising.
***** Upper intermediate? Your high schools must be really good, or require more than they do here. Most graduates can barely communicate basic survival skills here, though if they took the two years at the start of their high school years (spending their last two years without studying the language), probably even less. I had to study way beyond the scope of my courses in my free time outside of school to get beyond utter basics.
Probably his English also wasn’t interfering with his brain’s access to what it learned about mandarin. Just not having tha interference would probably help with fluency to some extent
@@eundongpark1672 Oh, that's a good point! If he had partial amnesia which included English, then his forgotten knowledge of English would not be interfering with his basic knowledge of Mandarin, thus aiding his fluency. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they were stored in two different portions of his brain. His native English of course would've been in the language center, but the learned Mandarin could've been stored in memory where other learned or memorized stuff is stored. And only the language center was injured, leaving the Mandarin to dominate. The brain is so fascinating!
TiedyeVikki that’s a good point too. I know when I was learning Spanish, I could almost feel the difference in how it felt to speak when I was moving from studying it and recalling it from memory to just simply having it there when I wanted to say something. I definitely felt like it moved in my head. It also meant I just FELT when my word choices/ expressions were too English, even when I didn’t particularly have a way to say it more “spanishly”. Instead “knowing” the spanish language, I moved to having the “skill” of the Spanish language (if you get what I mean”) But for the mandarin-speaking Aussie kid, my hypothesis is that whatever removed the English also having the effect of freeing his brain to focus on the available mandarin knowledge. If you think about little kids learning anything (not just language), they just absorb it without “rules” interfering. So if they are trying to speak they’re not constructing an English sentence and then sorting thru their knowledge of mandarin to find words, grammar or expressions to match the English. Instead they just look at the mandarin they know and how to build meaning using the available language tools. I think this is why in language class, at a certain stage, they get students to say the same meaning in different ways, to find other words to say the same thing...it’s about exercising the skill of flexibly navigating your way through meaning to work around the gaps in your knowledge, but also helping you loosen your attachment to the gramatical structures of your native language (I think).
Anyone saying its mislesding is wrong going from speaking a little to fluency are entirely different ... learning conversational language is a different task all by itself.
I speak 4 languages fluently including english and mandarin. I understand how Ben feels when he was just stuck in 1 language unable to switch it back to english. I too after been speaking in 1 specific language for quote long time period, my brain instantly block the rest of the 3 languages.
“Fluently” is a lie if your brain blocks the other 3. I speak 3 languages and don’t struggle switching between any of them. My level in French is quite high but I’d hesitate to say I’m fluent. People just like to say “fluent” and don’t even know what that means.
@@じゃみっと Even as a dumb American, this English is fluent enough I had to read through it a second time to find the mistakes. I do hiring as a large component of my job and I would consider this fluent. Fluency doesn't mean 100% accuracy, it means that the words are comprehensible and easy to understand. Our brains have the ability to fill in the rest.
I'm an Aussie. I woke up from coma, then I became a chinese man. My parents were immigrants from China. Isn't it more weird than this ridiculous story?
If it's true, this is amazing. I've studied foreign languages and it's one thing to have taken some classes, quite another to actually be thinking in a non-native language.
I think in his past lives, he might be a Chinese. So when he was reborn, the language still lingers in in his subconscious mind. It take the coma to make him remember the language again.
+NangongReng1973 There is such a thing as Foreign Accent Syndrome. It's rare, (I've heard about 60 cases world-wide) where people have brain damage and wake up speaking with a foreign accent. I think that's also due to reincarnated people using past life memory to help them recover their language skills. There's also the case of Czech Matej Kus who spoke perfect English (temporarily) when he hit his head.
In the United States, Spanish is the second language of choice, since our neighbors to the south mostly speak Spanish. In Australia, I’d assume that Chinese would be the second language taught.
I studied Spanish in high school, went on a trip to Mexico City, and 42 years later, visited Cuba. I remembered my Spanish. Why is this guy's story so special?
Similar thing happened to me in 1996. I was in 4th grade. I woke up from an accident and spoke exclusively in English (It's not my native language. I was studying it in school though but I'm not in the skill level yet to have that all English conversations). They say I was like that for three days. But I don't remember any of it or the accident itself as I had had short term memory loss too. I just remembered waking up on the 5th day, with bruises and wounds all over and thinking what happened? What am I doing there?
My mom had dementia and there was a time, about 3 months, where she would forget English whenever she got upset or agitated. She had lived in Greece for several years starting when she was five, and had actually forgotten English during the time, but didn’t use it much after returning to the US. I’m fluent because I also lived there for several years. Mom was in a care center in Arkansas, and from time to time the nurses would call me up and say, “Sorry to bother you, your mother is speaking Greek and we can’t understand her.” What always surprised me was that she’d be using words that I had no idea she knew, or would remember! It was 8-year-old kid Greek but clearly real. They changed her medications and the problem stopped happening.
Kind of opposite of this, but in the later stages of my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s, the nurse told my mom they think something is wrong with his throat. Turns out he just reverted to speaking Bohemian, a language he hasn’t spoken since childhood.
@@indonesianstudent88 I suppose they’re the same? It was Bohemia when my grandfather was a child, when his parents immigrated. There were parts of Bohemia that spoke German, but I believe my family was from Prague that apparently spoke Czech. I always heard it called Bohemia by my family.
This is only possible if you've been subjected to enough of the language throughout your lifetime. I've been living in China for 5 years and am conversational in China, although make a lot of grammar mistakes and often forget vocabulary. I know all of that information is in my head, but I am still translating to find or recover it. I do see this as possible. Sometimes if I've been having a dream in mandarin, it's the first language I think in when I wake up.
The side of his brain that controls language and understanding a language was probably immensely stimulated to a point where he knew exactly what to say and how to say it.
Ever dreamed that you were dreaming? Believe me guys, it‘s so weird, like waking up in your dream and realizing you‘re still dreaming and trying to wake up again. Like yo wtf, let me wake up already
There is a phenomenon called 'Lucid Dreaming': you are dreaming, and you are fully aware of the fact that what you are experiencing is a dream. It can probably be used for problem solving (life's real problems) or for having a richer life. You can probably find books on this subject in your local library.
Diplomacy: to keep talking to someone when it seems like it is the hardest thing to do....a very vital skill, in our families and societies where resentment and hatred are on the rise
the same thing happened to me, before I was fluent in English but then I went into a super strong trance and now I woke up speaking only Spanish and I knew Spanish and English before but after that happened I could only speak Spanish and I still have that problem but little by little I am recovering my English. But my life has been hell because people think I'm faking it and I don't want to speak English fluently this hell happened to me since 5 years ago and now I'm trying to make the best of them because this life is the only one I have and I can't change it as I want but I admit that when I'm around people who knew me I speak English before and now I don't I feel so clumsy that I want to run away screaming
I'll be darn if I didn't fall off my bike, hit my head on a metal handrail and now I speak fluent Walkenese. Every time I open my mouth, out comes the distinctive voice of Chris Walken. WOW!, It's Crazy!
I am Norwegian and i speak some english with a hard Norwegian accent, i also struggle to find words in conversations so i usually tend to stay away from engageing in english spoken conversations, even this dialogue i am having right now i use google translate. But when i wake up from surgeries it`s the other way around, fluent english comes naturally and Norwegian language becomes a struggle, it wears off after a couple of hours and it doesnt happen every time i go under.
"... what possibly happened to Ben was that the parts of the brain that recalled English were damaged in the crash and those that retained Mandarin were activated when the 22-year-old woke up from his coma." - _Daily Mail_ 02 Sep 2014
Wow that's fantastic I've been trying to speak English for 87 years and I still haven't mastered it yet but my psychologist told me I was acutely dyslectic, and I told her I had never visited that country in my life.
+Tomo Dachi Pretty sure he went on the dating show afterwards because of the fluency. The truth is he has been learning mandarin before the car crash and he is claiming the car crash allowed him to gain better mastery of the language.
+ycafe123 - I agree with you.. although we should also remember that tv shows get people to change their stories allll the time, so nothing really new there at least.
Vodka uk so youre considered bilingual if youre native in one and learning another? i thought if youre legit fluent in 2. as in accent fluency and all.
My parents are both Chinese yet I never learned to speak Chinese up until last year when I went to Taiwan to, finally, study Mandarin Chinese. I'm not bragging or anything, but in a short span of 1 year, I've managed to get to fluent level in all aspects of the language (reading, writing, listening, speaking) even with pronunciation and diction. The language is not hard per se, it just takes time and dedication to learn and love it. Not to burst anyone's bubbles, but his Mandarin is very elementary, or intermediate at the very least. I've got no hate or jealousy for him since I admire him for learning the language. Look at this clip of the show he's on, you'll know what I mean (watch?v=2SGSPdJ14NE)
It's like any language there is in the world, you just need to be able to recognize certain characters, or as you put it, symbols in order to form words or sentence structures. You can't say something is hard just because people think it's hard and have never tried learning it. In all honesty, even the Chinese people think that their characters are so complex that they introduced "Simplified" ones to ease up the learning process for its people. But learning the more "traditional" characters, in a way, will make you understand and at the same time visualize these characters, making the learning experience more enjoyable. Why do people get scared to things they're unfamiliar of? It's just human nature I guess.
Sometimes I forget I know fluent Spanish and at those times, I hear Spanish and I'm like "wait, wtf, why do I know how to understand this?" And then I go "...oh wait"
The brain is truly amazing, and there is so much we do not know. I am friends (not online friends, but actual friends) with a man who is one of the only people in the world that has Acquired Savant Syndrome. He hit his head on the bottom of a pool when he miscalculated he depth, and could compose elaborate piano pieces not long after he recovered. His name is Derek Amato. He's not only a one-in-a-billion (maybe more) medical mystery, but a funny and genuine human being as well.
So he didn't weak up speaking mandarin, he already spoke it before, but now could remember the stuff he learned better and learn new mandarin faster...
Hah, I remember at the end of high school I started having dreams in French, would wake up speaking in French, thinking in French, and being so confused if someone tried to speak english to me just after I woke.
What holds us back from speaking a learned language fluently is our brain's tendency to follow shortcuts. The coma either desensitised or damaged the English pathways, making it easier for him to express himself in Mandarin. The same effect possibly could have been achieved by isolating oneself in a forest for a week and making an effort to think in Mandarin. As a kid growing up in a part of the world where most spoke with a European accent, I remember going back to Asia to see relatives for a month, my accent slowly adapting, then coming back finding it hard to regain my regular accent. But after going back to school for 2-3 days, it was like nothing had changed. The same thing also happened when I went to the States for a similar length of time. Yet again when I lived in Asia for half a year and spoke limited English - language preference aside, even my mannerisms were different, which became much more apparent when people were not reacting like they did in Asia. I wonder what Ben is up to these days.
That's not true. Our brain already knows all languages, basically. The thing is, our brains cannot handle it because we only possess a certain amount of our brain. Meaning, if we at least used 50% of our brain capacity, our brains will handle most of the languages out there without studying. We hear all types of languages around us, our brain subconsciously takes it in and studies it. So just a little hit to the head, you can wake up speaking a whole other language you never even thought you knew. Crazy, right? We are smarter than we think. Actually, evidence to back me up, a young teen who plays soccer recently got into a coma for 3 days. He woke up speaking Spanish, a language he has never even looked into. Although, since Spanish is well-known and used very frequently, his brain subconsciously caught on. The cooler thing is that a great hit to the head can make you feel like a different language is your main language; native language. Even if you know nothing about that language! It's like you have a baby mind, and you get taught whatever language your parents teaches you. Although in this case, you are teaching yourself in a short amount of time, you've already heard most of whatever this language is, then your brain automatically decides it's your main language. So cool! +Brogers , to answer your question, yes! Our brains can recognize another language, but we can't use it! +Adam A , I understand where you would get your answer from, the video didn't explain much. You don't have to study for a language before waking up with Foreign accent syndrome OR Foreign Language syndrome. I'd just like to make that clear for anyone who is seriously questioning this video.
Yes, it does happen, it´s called Xenoglossy, I remember when I was 17, I liked this german melodic metal band, and I was listening this song I really liked of them with my headphones while doing something on the computer, I´ve been listening this song for days, and although most of it is a symphonie with no lyrics there´s a woman talking in the middle of the song. Now, I didn´t know ANY german at that time AT ALL, NOTHING (my native language is Spanish btw), I just liked the song, and that day I just had it on replay and for some reason when the woman started talking I understood EVERYTHING she said, I was visualizing the story she was telling in my head with all the details she specified colors, etc., ALL!, kind of like when someone tells you a story on your native language and you just visualize it on your head. I simply understood it, and at the moment she was talking I was not thinking or anything, my mind was empty just listening to the song, but right after she finished talking, I immediately realized what happened and was like "what the hell, I got all that!". Of course I then looked up into the lyrics and the translation and it was indeed exactly as I understood it, which didn´t surprise me because I just knew that I understood it. So that has happened to me only once and only for one of the replays of the songs, but if it was possible in those 5 min of the song, just imagine how awesome would it be if we were able to do it all the time!, we definitely have the capability to do it no doubt about it, but what could trigger it or activate that in us I have no idea, maybe some mindfulness stuff, maybe that´s the oneness spiritual people are always talking about, I don´t know.
I thought it was one of those things where a person suddenly started to speak a language they didn't know before. This phenomenon is often rumoured to be caused by demonic possession.
TheSeductiveArts i just meant that the video title misrepresented the story and gave it seem more mysterious than it is. I thought oh shit is this a supernatural event caught on camera? Instead it was some ordinary medical shit
Arsène Lupin He's a skin walker. The first person it saw spoke Chinese so it imitated her until it realized it fucked up. Apparently they're prevalent in Australia because I've heard other accounts of them there.
I woke up this morning and spoke fluent German. I was stunned until i realised that i'm German.
nice one :D
Hahaha you make my day
Gönn dir 😂
Thomas K 😂😂😂
😂😂😂😂
When my dad woke up after his surgery, he needed to say something to the nurse. But for some reason the nurse didn't understand him! It was a little strange but then a second nurse arrived. That nurse couldn't understand either. Eventually a third nurse arrived who, with great difficulty, did understand my dad. He didn't realize that he was talking in a peculiar mixture of Spanish, English, Finnish and Swedish. It took a nurse who could understand all those languages to get what my dad was trying to say. 😄He did eventually start talking normally.
Dam get that nurse a metal
🧢
@@bradcha5413 what kind? i like myself some aluminum
@@jesuki Platinum, perhaps.
@@henryspiers8578oh god it would be a nightmare to wake me up from a coma, Swedish english German Romanian and I’d probably throw in Spanish words and maybe even Latin if I forget a word in the other languages. Yea it wouldn’t be fun but at least I’m not fluent in German and Romanian and under.
Title should read: Aussie wakes up from a coma with an improved ability to learn Mandarin.
lol true
Honestly, would be just as interesting of a story.
He said that for the first three days, he only spoke Mandarin, so title is not lying.
😂😂😂😂
The title was written like that to click bait people
I think he actually learned it better than he consciously thought he had in high school. I think the part of his brain that spoke English interfered with the part of his brain that spoke Mandarin. That's why he wasn't that fluent in it. Upon awakening from a coma however he couldn't retrieve the English language from that part of his brain. He could retrieve the Mandarin language. The part of his brain that spoke English was not interfering with the part that spoke Mandarin. Therefore he sounded fairly fluent in Mandarin.
This…now this makes a lot of sense! Great theory
I think we're very good at storing at lot of information but not so good at recovering it. For example, there are many things that I've forgotten that I'm able to recall if I see a photo, hear a song, go to a particular place or hear a name.
It makes a lot of sense but, he only learnt basic mandarin right?
@@koriandr7731 perhaps he was exposed to a lot of mandarin during the basic fluency class but only consciously learned a little bit of it, like the above comment said. I think this to be reasonably possible based on my own experience learning mandarin. After all, when learning a new language, you often can understand much better before u can speak!
Well damn…..wonder if one day I’ll wake up speaking French because I can’t recall much of that French at all 😂
I woke up speaking fluent Turkish after dating a Turkish man, maybe I picked it up after hearing him speak to his mother on the phone. It happened several times, but I didn't know what I was saying at all. I couldn't remember any Turkish upon waking up. I still don't, but he said my conversations in the middle of the night were perfect. Subconscious mind is a interesting place.
Woooow!
Wow that's interesting..Yeah subconscious is really mesmerizing.Wish we could use it.
Wow, that's crazy! You're right about the subconscious mind. So mysterious... it's like we have a possibly super genius capacity in our brains that picks up on everything in a way that can't be retained or used consciously -- same as how your subconscious mind must have picked up on the Turkish language, its context, structure, grammar, and all that over time and connected it in a way that made sense while your concious mind still couldn't understand it. Kind of reminds me of a movie with Bradley Cooper called "Limitless" or something, where a special pill allowed him to use his brain to the fullest extent, gathering, learning, retaining, and calculating everything super quickly.
That’s pretty interesting
Yeah me too. I lived in korea for a short period and speak a little korean. One night i dreamed about talking to my korean friends.they all speak fluent korean in my dream. Seems so real. I couldnt event construct one single sentence.
lol just go to settings and change your main language back to English
ahahhah
you mean he need to go back in coma to restart?
@@yuchenko8732 dude just dont question it. It was a comment not a question
Lol
hi 6 years later
i wish I wake up as a rich person :)
me too!!
There is a woman who worked at Walmart and has 4 kids, her mom dreamed up the numbers and gave her the lotto ticket and bam she won 188 million dollars. She doesn't know how to say no and spends spends spends and has already bailed out her drug dealing boyfriend out of jail 3 times which cost her 22 million.
What I'm trying to get at is God or whoever whatever decides the money fate simply just doesn't give a fuck who it is and what they'll do with it.
If it ain't a dummy it's and old couple who still want to go to work everyday lol.
YESS!! LOL!
Gonk
That story sounds like complete BS.
Bhanu Tez 😂
Guys, it's not that he just learned it, it's the fact that his brain switched the default language to Mandarin, so he thought in Mandarin as if it was his native language.
He was Spanish in a past incarnation.
This is nothing I remember when my Girlfriend's father kicked me in the balls I could speak several languages but it was for a short period of time because as the pain started fading away my ability to speak several languages started fading away too.
LMAO !
You see those Filipino ladies? I think they like me! I'll kick you in the balls and see if you can understand them.
😂
Why'd he kick you in the nads 😂
Jokes like this make me teste.
It's a misleading title. He already knew a little Chinese before.
how is it misleading, it did not say that he couldn't speak it before, it just said that he woke up speaking chinese
The interesting part is that his brain prioritized Mandarin as his native language. When this happens I'm sure you'll learn even faster. This needs to be studied imo.
It is certainly facinating
there is someone in my country malaysia who always watch korean dramas later woke up speaking korean fluently. but she lost it few days later.
because he's not fluent 我可以讲普通话
Woke up from coma then speak fluent in basic Mandarin.
nice correction
klvInz Vin after taking mandarin as a second lenguaje in school. bull.c.r.a.p.
+My Tiny House in a Big City you cant even speak fluent English
Woven Spade, you know what, after snooping through your page I realized I will be arguing with a nine year old. So go on with your life kid. Good bye.
My Tiny House in a Big City um.. i just made a joke, and even though it doesnt matter, im not nine, im 13 and why does that matter.
I think its really suspicious that he woke up speaking it and writing it. Honestly, I think he spoke it decently before he was in a coma. At most, the coma helped him pull it all together and learn quickly. I learn languages all the time and with every language you eventually hit this point where all of a sudden the language just starts to click in your head. And then you just become a sponge for vocabulary and all of the rules just start to make sense...for me what he described sounds like its just that.
+jimmellecarnegie No, he learnt it to a basic level in high school. Then when he was in a coma you usually get looked after by 2 nurses (rotating 12 hours), 1 of the nurses looking after him probably spoke in Mandarin and watched Mandarin shows while he was in the coma which would of triggered in it his head.
So when he woke up and saw the Chinese lady after he was exposed to that Mandarin it was natural for his brain to use it.
He didn't wake up fluent though. I'm pretty sure he's the host of LearnChineseNow, so now he's fluent.
+jimmellecarnegie He learned plenty of the language as a high school student, but I think that small amount of brain damage (plus, as THISGUY said, a Mandarin-speaking nurse) turned Mandarin into his default language when he woke up.
I've reached the level in Mandarin in which I think this could happen to me if I were to suddenly find myself in a Mandarin-speaking household; you can suddenly piece it all together and understand it.
Amat Gotchi I wish it happened to me, in a way...
"At most, the coma helped him pull it all together and learn quickly."
I think this is precisely what happened.
I was looking for some explanation of this thing on the internet, but this case is not what I expected. This guy already knew some Mandarin, and had Chinese speaking nurses. I have a real case , a Turkish woman, goes into coma, no background of the language, no nurses no bs, she starts speaking ukranian (russian) all of a sudden, and she is fluent.
This guy is a comical genius! We were roomies in Beijing during the 2012 hanyu qiao competition and take it from me, this guy is a true inspiration to all other foreign Chinese students...good on you, Ben!
I just wake up every morning living my life as an ice-cream...
Minita Bathija Don't destroy his childhood.
Minita Bathija
Savage😂😂😂😂
ᗷᒪEᗩᑕᕼEᗪ IᑕE ᑕᖇEᗩᗰ that must be sweet
I just melt...
So, throughout the entire video, it really only shows him saying, "kafei lai le" (coffee has arrived). Why would you have a video like this and have the entirety of it consist of him speaking only English?
So people that speak English can understand his journey. He seems like a likeable guy.
Michael M Oh yea, not saying he's not likable. The claim is he woke up and was able to speak Mandarin, but the only thing he says in Mandarin is something you'd learn on maybe your second day of learning the language.
what are you talking about, he says many other things in mandarin...
Miaoyun h Nah, I'm embarrassed though. I don't know how I made this happen but I guess I didn't get to the point where it shows him on the TV show. I had Chinese roommates for several years and have been to China several times, so I understand most of it. I guess I just had ADD that day. Something.
Miaoyun h I think he has a youtube channel where he teaches people chinese search for laowai ben hedges
How the brain handles multiple languages is super cool. I've been learning American Sign Language for 8 years, and once I went to college and was taking ASL classes there, it got very intense. Classes would be 2-3 hours long, completely immersive. No speaking, only sign language. Once class was over, it was sometimes hard to switch back to speaking English. Once I made to to ASL 4 and 5 at the college level, I started occasionally having dreams entirely in ASL, which is a crazy experience!
It's amazing how much your brain picks up when you aren't paying attention, even as an adult. I've since started learning Danish as well, and have added music in Danish to my phone so I can listen to it on the way to work, which has definitely helped my vocabulary and listening comprehension.
Dexter wasn't too far off listening to his French tapes in his sleep. After all, he did learn "omelette du fromage".
Hi Moxie, how have your Danish journey been so far?
I'm a native but some of my foreign friends are learning Danish (but struggling quite a lot)
It's been pretty good so far! I've been learning on Duolingo for about 2 years, but I haven't been very consistent, so I feel like I haven't progressed as much as I could have if I'd stuck with it all the way.
I'm starting to feel comfortable creating original sentences, but I can still only talk about basics, like introducing myself and using simple verbs and adjectives to talk about animals, food, and other people.
Jeg elsker dansk, det er en smukt sprog!
Danish ain't easy to learn, but it seems like you have come far until now, keep up the good work ;)
actually in China, there's a man who woke up from coma speaking English which he totally had no idea of before.
Cool
+Li MOLLY plot twist: the two changed soul
i wanna see that story instead.
It's "English", not engrish
There are some people waking up from coma and say they've been to heaven (the Christian one) and make a lot of money.
He studied Mandarin in Australia and went to China after that. He was in the China matchmaking show ’非诚勿扰‘。So I call him BS. He is hungry for media attention.
Correct !!
agree
There's also a man who woke from a coma speaking fluent Swedish who had not studied the language at all prior to being in a coma.
Why is that bullshit?? The title says he wakes up from a come speaking Mandarin, it doesn't say he couldn't speak it before!!
Dude... I could very well get a whole news crew to my house and tell them that I woke up from a coma speaking English... it's nothing special that he can speak chinese after a coma given that he has learnt it before, as many people do regain their cognitive abilities after a coma.
The son is like “My Mandarin will change the world!!!!!”
And the dad is like “I wish he would get a real job but I’m happy to see him recovering well”
It's like a Chris Lilley show but irl
I'm confused. Didn't he say he studied it and was pretty good at it before the coma? So why is this a story? Lol
i guess what's interesting that whenever he wants to express a thought verbally, Mandarin words come to mind instead of the Australian tongue
No singpop woowah
GodDesignNiesha, he said that he knew basic mandarin before hand.
Rachel J Nah eee sed eee didn know no chianamuns an eee only seen sum on telly...
KonstantinGeist
exactly
Truth be told, his mandarin pronunciation is not bad at all for an Aussie.
+Yumeng Zhao which EU country has best speaking accent for Mandarin?
THISGUY
Probably Canada
@@boyeonrhee336 >"EU country"
>"Canada"
“for an Aussie" oh how nice of you to give him (and all Aussies) that compliment.
@@boyeonrhee336 nah might be uganda
I wish I could wake up speaking mandarin.
They say it's your past life coming into contact with your new body or something you've heard for awhile.
wtf??
this is what I think as well.
I wanna have bubble tea
Meili Wang88 saaame. sigh. regret not continuing learning when i was younger.
maybe the best way for me to get my french DELF diplome is to get coma...
Bari M.N. hahaha you're funny. who knows right?
celest s agree!
If I did it, yo can too!
Same
J'espère que tu l'as eu...
If the guy had had no exposure to Mandarin, then this would be a story of note. But since he actually studied Mandarin, there's no big mystery. Either he is faking the sudden fluency (He was already fluent), or something happened in his brain - for example, a stroke - that opened up the pathways and just brought what he had learned (and thought forgotten) to the forefront.
If this guy had no prior exposure to Mandarin, this wouldn't just be a "story of note". It would be a miracle.
Ahh yes finally found the expert in the comments. Sure, happens all the time that someone wakes up from a coma and is suddenly fluent in a language that they only could stutter some basic sentences in before. Or it must have all been faked, of course. Internet superheroes!
@@chunye215 You forgot the sarcasm emoji...
I actually had a similar experience with this after a surgery. I woke up speaking Japanese to the nurse next to me, who spoke English, Japanese, and French. I have been studying Japanese for a while now, but I haven't been able to speak that well ever since. Someone should really do a study on this. Maybe we can learn how to alter people's internal dialogue to equal it to their native language by putting them under anesthesia for a short period of time, and when they awake, only introducing them to a native speaker of the language they are learning for a while, so that they can possible switch their internal dialogue, temporarily.
Ya mean that...youre turning Japanese, youre turning Japanese, you really think so????
@@andrewhammel8218 I don't think she meant that, Andrew.
I believe that this phenomena has something to do with past lives, as we haven't always returned as people of the same ethnicity, we have had lives as other ethnic groups, and as different sexes; and of various other life forms. All previous lives lived leave an impression on the soul, somehow the person inadvertently accessed that information from his soul during his coma
@@EclesysGalaxy 😄 I’m pretty sure he’s referring to this famous 80s hit song “Turning Japanese” by the ... B-52s?
Perhaps one could achieve similar with electroconvulsion.
Mandarin is like the hardest langauge to learn, ive been speaking it at home and with relatives all my life but my proficiency is still like that of someone in grade school. I find German so much easier and speak it like a native speaker. Amazing how this kid is able to pick it up so quickly. All the tones in Mandarin sounds the same so only 4 tones it total, thus it its sort of like speaking in binary. Even a character with one tone can mean many different things >.
It'a far from being the only tone language coupled to the fact that there's no grammar to speak of, most words are 1 syllable, verb tenses don't change, there is no masculine, feminine, verbs never change endings all make Mandarin and other forms of Chinese fairly easy languages to learn. What complicates the language is the writing system. With Pinyin ( Romanized script for writing Chinese) it becomes one of the easiest languages to learn. If you check for the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers, Chinese in any of it's forms, never makes the list.
German is easy? 😅
But no Chinese babies ever complaint that learning Mandarin is difficult...
@@jaimekaimero2912coming from a tonal Sino Tibetan language speaker Chinese doesn't sound difficult to my ear. Cuz I speak two tonal languages and have been hearing tonal all my life so it's pretty basic for tonal add speakers to be able to differentiate tones
Oh my. What a story. What an experience. What a beautiful boy and a tremendously loving family
what a comment!
This report is unfortunately lacking in that it isn't clear on whether there was a sudden jump in his mandarin skills after the accident. That is extremely important.
+Dan Frederiksen Japan Times:
"He learnt some Mandarin in high school and later traveled in China and studied in Beijing."
OH MY GOSH! I ran into him at the airport in indonesia a long time ago and I just saw this video now. He was calling someone and speaking mandarin and I couldn't help but take notice of him. and then he dropped something and I gave it to him asdfjlkl wow
Last Week I bumped my head and immediately I could swear profanities in a few languages.
Doctor : Finally, you woke up after a 1 week coma.
Ben : 我到底在哪里？？让我出去！
I also wake up forgetting all I've studied
The title's kinda misleading. He was already at basic fluency before the coma, but temporarily had amnesia so he couldn't speak English, but only Mandarin. I thought it was more like he only knew a little bit of Mandarin and was then able to speak it fluently, but that wasn't the case. Still kinda interesting I guess, but not as surprising.
the title is perfectly accurate, ot doesnt say anything about being fleunt, or more fluent
***** Upper intermediate? Your high schools must be really good, or require more than they do here. Most graduates can barely communicate basic survival skills here, though if they took the two years at the start of their high school years (spending their last two years without studying the language), probably even less. I had to study way beyond the scope of my courses in my free time outside of school to get beyond utter basics.
Probably his English also wasn’t interfering with his brain’s access to what it learned about mandarin. Just not having tha interference would probably help with fluency to some extent
@@eundongpark1672 Oh, that's a good point! If he had partial amnesia which included English, then his forgotten knowledge of English would not be interfering with his basic knowledge of Mandarin, thus aiding his fluency. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they were stored in two different portions of his brain. His native English of course would've been in the language center, but the learned Mandarin could've been stored in memory where other learned or memorized stuff is stored. And only the language center was injured, leaving the Mandarin to dominate. The brain is so fascinating!
TiedyeVikki that’s a good point too. I know when I was learning Spanish, I could almost feel the difference in how it felt to speak when I was moving from studying it and recalling it from memory to just simply having it there when I wanted to say something. I definitely felt like it moved in my head. It also meant I just FELT when my word choices/ expressions were too English, even when I didn’t particularly have a way to say it more “spanishly”. Instead “knowing” the spanish language, I moved to having the “skill” of the Spanish language (if you get what I mean”)
But for the mandarin-speaking Aussie kid, my hypothesis is that whatever removed the English also having the effect of freeing his brain to focus on the available mandarin knowledge. If you think about little kids learning anything (not just language), they just absorb it without “rules” interfering. So if they are trying to speak they’re not constructing an English sentence and then sorting thru their knowledge of mandarin to find words, grammar or expressions to match the English. Instead they just look at the mandarin they know and how to build meaning using the available language tools. I think this is why in language class, at a certain stage, they get students to say the same meaning in different ways, to find other words to say the same thing...it’s about exercising the skill of flexibly navigating your way through meaning to work around the gaps in your knowledge, but also helping you loosen your attachment to the gramatical structures of your native language (I think).
He's definitely a sleeper of Chinese intelligence.
+StJohnsSmythe how do they make a sleeper agents anyway, Im curious on that
Anyone saying its mislesding is wrong going from speaking a little to fluency are entirely different ... learning conversational language is a different task all by itself.
I speak 4 languages fluently including english and mandarin. I understand how Ben feels when he was just stuck in 1 language unable to switch it back to english. I too after been speaking in 1 specific language for quote long time period, my brain instantly block the rest of the 3 languages.
Your English doesn't seem that fluent to me, buddy.
“Fluently” is a lie if your brain blocks the other 3. I speak 3 languages and don’t struggle switching between any of them. My level in French is quite high but I’d hesitate to say I’m fluent. People just like to say “fluent” and don’t even know what that means.
@@じゃみっと Even as a dumb American, this English is fluent enough I had to read through it a second time to find the mistakes. I do hiring as a large component of my job and I would consider this fluent. Fluency doesn't mean 100% accuracy, it means that the words are comprehensible and easy to understand. Our brains have the ability to fill in the rest.
@Mavl NT Besides, you need to hear someone speak to assess fluency I reckon
I'm an Aussie. I woke up from coma, then I became a chinese man. My parents were immigrants from China. Isn't it more weird than this ridiculous story?
Aussie are immigrants too, you not native
In Chinese, it is called 'borrowing a corpse for your soul to return to live'. Your soul went into the body of a Chinese man who has just passed away.
😂😂😂😂
A joyful heart is the best medicine :)
This is brilliant! so happy for Ben!!
If it's true, this is amazing. I've studied foreign languages and it's one thing to have taken some classes, quite another to actually be thinking in a non-native language.
Truly remarkable how he uses this to improve his Mandarin and find a picture bigger than himself ❤
I think in his past lives, he might be a Chinese. So when he was reborn, the language still lingers in in his subconscious mind. It take the coma to make him remember the language again.
+NangongReng1973 is that a joke or are you actually being serious ? :/ past lives? ahahahaha
+NangongReng1973 ASSCREED DNA MEMORY CONFIRMED AS PLAUSIBLE.
In his past life he was the chinese great mao zedong.
+NangongReng1973 no, it's not his past life. Some chinese ghost/soul took control of the vacant body (intetional or not). Just like in manga bois
+NangongReng1973 There is such a thing as Foreign Accent Syndrome. It's rare, (I've heard about 60 cases world-wide) where people have brain damage and wake up speaking with a foreign accent. I think that's also due to reincarnated people using past life memory to help them recover their language skills. There's also the case of Czech Matej Kus who spoke perfect English (temporarily) when he hit his head.
This guy legit gained 949399392939493992910109383858282 social credit from a brain injury
That's pretty cool. What's interesting is his story now, how he has embraced the Chinese language and how people are helping him out.
What an interesting gift! There has to be something we can learn from this that would enable all people to learn quickly many things!
The most amazing thing to me is that Australia gives you the opportunity to learn Mandarin in highschool. Certainly more useful than German.
In the United States, Spanish is the second language of choice, since our neighbors to the south mostly speak Spanish. In Australia, I’d assume that Chinese would be the second language taught.
@@LoyaFrostwind Spanish is spoken in many parts of the world. Chinese would give you great employment opportunities.
I studied Spanish in high school, went on a trip to Mexico City, and 42 years later, visited Cuba. I remembered my Spanish. Why is this guy's story so special?
Similar thing happened to me in 1996. I was in 4th grade. I woke up from an accident and spoke exclusively in English (It's not my native language. I was studying it in school though but I'm not in the skill level yet to have that all English conversations). They say I was like that for three days. But I don't remember any of it or the accident itself as I had had short term memory loss too. I just remembered waking up on the 5th day, with bruises and wounds all over and thinking what happened? What am I doing there?
My mom had dementia and there was a time, about 3 months, where she would forget English whenever she got upset or agitated. She had lived in Greece for several years starting when she was five, and had actually forgotten English during the time, but didn’t use it much after returning to the US. I’m fluent because I also lived there for several years.
Mom was in a care center in Arkansas, and from time to time the nurses would call me up and say, “Sorry to bother you, your mother is speaking Greek and we can’t understand her.”
What always surprised me was that she’d be using words that I had no idea she knew, or would remember! It was 8-year-old kid Greek but clearly real.
They changed her medications and the problem stopped happening.
Title intentionally implies that he woke up and miraculously spoke a language formerly unknown to him. CLICKBAIT
Kind of opposite of this, but in the later stages of my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s, the nurse told my mom they think something is wrong with his throat. Turns out he just reverted to speaking Bohemian, a language he hasn’t spoken since childhood.
Czech you meant?
@@indonesianstudent88 I suppose they’re the same? It was Bohemia when my grandfather was a child, when his parents immigrated. There were parts of Bohemia that spoke German, but I believe my family was from Prague that apparently spoke Czech. I always heard it called Bohemia by my family.
This is only possible if you've been subjected to enough of the language throughout your lifetime. I've been living in China for 5 years and am conversational in China, although make a lot of grammar mistakes and often forget vocabulary. I know all of that information is in my head, but I am still translating to find or recover it. I do see this as possible. Sometimes if I've been having a dream in mandarin, it's the first language I think in when I wake up.
i stubbed my toe on the table and i shouted in 50 alien languages.
The side of his brain that controls language and understanding a language was probably immensely stimulated to a point where he knew exactly what to say and how to say it.
I went on "If you are the one" in China with him. Great bloke.
Ever dreamed that you were dreaming? Believe me guys, it‘s so weird, like waking up in your dream and realizing you‘re still dreaming and trying to wake up again.
Like yo wtf, let me wake up already
There is a phenomenon called 'Lucid Dreaming': you are dreaming, and you are fully aware of the fact that what you are experiencing is a dream. It can probably be used for problem solving (life's real problems) or for having a richer life. You can probably find books on this subject in your local library.
Diplomacy: to keep talking to someone when it seems like it is the hardest thing to do....a very vital skill, in our families and societies where resentment and hatred are on the rise
the same thing happened to me, before I was fluent in English but then I went into a super strong trance and now I woke up speaking only Spanish and I knew Spanish and English before but after that happened I could only speak Spanish and I still have that problem but little by little I am recovering my English. But my life has been hell because people think I'm faking it and I don't want to speak English fluently this hell happened to me since 5 years ago and now I'm trying to make the best of them because this life is the only one I have and I can't change it as I want but I admit that when I'm around people who knew me I speak English before and now I don't I feel so clumsy that I want to run away screaming
Duuuuude!!you are sooooo lucky!!
Thats a gift!!I wish I woke up speaking Mandarin
I have to LEARN it
tut
This makes me wish I would have stayed in Chinese class during my school years. Good for you Ben!
I'll be darn if I didn't fall off my bike, hit my head on a metal handrail and now I speak fluent Walkenese. Every time I open my mouth, out comes the distinctive voice of Chris Walken. WOW!, It's Crazy!
what a great advert for some annoying guy who studied mandarin.
😀😀😀😀
HAHAHA
awwww... don't be so jelly cuz you can speak but receive no extra love.
I am Norwegian and i speak some english with a hard Norwegian accent, i also struggle to find words in conversations so i usually tend to stay away from engageing in english spoken conversations, even this dialogue i am having right now i use google translate. But when i wake up from surgeries it`s the other way around, fluent english comes naturally and Norwegian language becomes a struggle, it wears off after a couple of hours and it doesnt happen every time i go under.
She is I wish I could wake up from a coma speaking fluent Japanese.
Well at least he’s speaking the world’s most spoken language. So hooray for him.
When I’m tired or very stressed : My accent shifts between Old school Texas Twang to Johnny Rottens’ own English .
imagine waking up and being able to trade stocks like a beast
"... what possibly happened to Ben was that the parts of the brain that recalled English were damaged in the crash and those that retained Mandarin were activated when the 22-year-old woke up from his coma."
- _Daily Mail_ 02 Sep 2014
let's put his mandarin skill aside i mean look at his face! he's so cute!!
haha. 小鲜肉~~
MrSiomys
what?
"juicy fresh meat"... a Chinese slang indicating a young boy who's soooo cute that you even want to give him a bite.
He’s pretty average
As a learner of Chinese I can confirm that closer to intermediate level you do fall into a coma
Wow that's fantastic I've been trying to speak English for 87 years and I still haven't mastered it yet but my psychologist told me I was acutely dyslectic, and I told her I had never visited that country in my life.
I've heard Dyslexia is good for holidays just be careful with the road signs.
I want this to happen to me.
Y'know, except the coma part
wise man!
@@happy20120808 why thank you!
this story is fake. he appeared on chinese dating show and his story was completely different.
+Tomo Dachi what was his story on the dating show? Also, yeah. No way this could happen.
+Tomo Dachi Pretty sure he went on the dating show afterwards because of the fluency. The truth is he has been learning mandarin before the car crash and he is claiming the car crash allowed him to gain better mastery of the language.
+ycafe123 - I agree with you.. although we should also remember that tv shows get people to change their stories allll the time, so nothing really new there at least.
Vodka Omg I also feel the same way about Korean lmao
Vodka uk so youre considered bilingual if youre native in one and learning another? i thought if youre legit fluent in 2. as in accent fluency and all.
My parents are both Chinese yet I never learned to speak Chinese up until last year when I went to Taiwan to, finally, study Mandarin Chinese. I'm not bragging or anything, but in a short span of 1 year, I've managed to get to fluent level in all aspects of the language (reading, writing, listening, speaking) even with pronunciation and diction. The language is not hard per se, it just takes time and dedication to learn and love it. Not to burst anyone's bubbles, but his Mandarin is very elementary, or intermediate at the very least. I've got no hate or jealousy for him since I admire him for learning the language. Look at this clip of the show he's on, you'll know what I mean (watch?v=2SGSPdJ14NE)
It's the writing part that scares me. You have to know,what is it, 3000 symbols to be considered literate?
It's like any language there is in the world, you just need to be able to recognize certain characters, or as you put it, symbols in order to form words or sentence structures.
You can't say something is hard just because people think it's hard and have never tried learning it.
In all honesty, even the Chinese people think that their characters are so complex that they introduced "Simplified" ones to ease up the learning process for its people. But learning the more "traditional" characters, in a way, will make you understand and at the same time visualize these characters, making the learning experience more enjoyable.
Why do people get scared to things they're unfamiliar of? It's just human nature I guess.
I met this guy and had no idea this was his story. I need his coma powers.
He's so good looking
Nicholas Bennett true
yet he is full of bs
Sometimes I forget I know fluent Spanish and at those times, I hear Spanish and I'm like "wait, wtf, why do I know how to understand this?" And then I go "...oh wait"
Aside From That, Did Everybody Thought He Could Do Kung Fu?
There is no scientific explanation. It’s spiritual! They are recalling their past lives
Lesson of this video: foreign languages are taught in school.
The brain is truly amazing, and there is so much we do not know. I am friends (not online friends, but actual friends) with a man who is one of the only people in the world that has Acquired Savant Syndrome. He hit his head on the bottom of a pool when he miscalculated he depth, and could compose elaborate piano pieces not long after he recovered. His name is Derek Amato. He's not only a one-in-a-billion (maybe more) medical mystery, but a funny and genuine human being as well.
Wow, you could make a whole career out of speaking mandarin if you are a foreigner!
"foreigner" is a misnomer.
No, you can’t. You need to have other skills. You don’t get paid just for being able to speak.
AS A NATIVE mandarin speaker, he speaks so well !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He remembers Mandarin from highschool. Why is this newsworthy?
He was recognizing it as his native language.
Amanda The Bean No, his brain just temporarily became unable to access the areas associated with English.
Wow, i was born in china , lived there for 4 years and he speakes better mandarin than i do now. :l
So he didn't weak up speaking mandarin, he already spoke it before, but now could remember the stuff he learned better and learn new mandarin faster...
He would become a good anchor ...and a hot one
Love the quick middle finger her gave to his little brother in a loving banter way when his parents werent looking
Chinese is not something you learn on and off in high school and become fluent at. This is indeed quite unusual.
I woke up this morning speaking idiosyncratic fluent American English. I am Amercan. Wow. Will wonders never cease.
Lucky Bastard
Hah, I remember at the end of high school I started having dreams in French, would wake up speaking in French, thinking in French, and being so confused if someone tried to speak english to me just after I woke.
Don't get why it's such a big deal. It's not surprising that I can speak English even though I am Chinese
Clickbait like everything on YouCancer these days
What holds us back from speaking a learned language fluently is our brain's tendency to follow shortcuts. The coma either desensitised or damaged the English pathways, making it easier for him to express himself in Mandarin. The same effect possibly could have been achieved by isolating oneself in a forest for a week and making an effort to think in Mandarin.
As a kid growing up in a part of the world where most spoke with a European accent, I remember going back to Asia to see relatives for a month, my accent slowly adapting, then coming back finding it hard to regain my regular accent. But after going back to school for 2-3 days, it was like nothing had changed. The same thing also happened when I went to the States for a similar length of time. Yet again when I lived in Asia for half a year and spoke limited English - language preference aside, even my mannerisms were different, which became much more apparent when people were not reacting like they did in Asia.
I wonder what Ben is up to these days.
Does this mean humans have the ability to then instantly recognise another language?
yes, but only after studying it for years like he did. i'm sensing that you didn't even watch the video
That's not true. Our brain already knows all languages, basically. The thing is, our brains cannot handle it because we only possess a certain amount of our brain. Meaning, if we at least used 50% of our brain capacity, our brains will handle most of the languages out there without studying. We hear all types of languages around us, our brain subconsciously takes it in and studies it. So just a little hit to the head, you can wake up speaking a whole other language you never even thought you knew. Crazy, right? We are smarter than we think. Actually, evidence to back me up, a young teen who plays soccer recently got into a coma for 3 days. He woke up speaking Spanish, a language he has never even looked into. Although, since Spanish is well-known and used very frequently, his brain subconsciously caught on. The cooler thing is that a great hit to the head can make you feel like a different language is your main language; native language. Even if you know nothing about that language! It's like you have a baby mind, and you get taught whatever language your parents teaches you. Although in this case, you are teaching yourself in a short amount of time, you've already heard most of whatever this language is, then your brain automatically decides it's your main language. So cool! +Brogers , to answer your question, yes! Our brains can recognize another language, but we can't use it! +Adam A , I understand where you would get your answer from, the video didn't explain much. You don't have to study for a language before waking up with Foreign accent syndrome OR Foreign Language syndrome. I'd just like to make that clear for anyone who is seriously questioning this video.
+Swag Master3000 cool
Yes, it does happen, it´s called Xenoglossy, I remember when I was 17, I liked this german melodic metal band, and I was listening this song I really liked of them with my headphones while doing something on the computer, I´ve been listening this song for days, and although most of it is a symphonie with no lyrics there´s a woman talking in the middle of the song. Now, I didn´t know ANY german at that time AT ALL, NOTHING (my native language is Spanish btw), I just liked the song, and that day I just had it on replay and for some reason when the woman started talking I understood EVERYTHING she said, I was visualizing the story she was telling in my head with all the details she specified colors, etc., ALL!, kind of like when someone tells you a story on your native language and you just visualize it on your head. I simply understood it, and at the moment she was talking I was not thinking or anything, my mind was empty just listening to the song, but right after she finished talking, I immediately realized what happened and was like "what the hell, I got all that!". Of course I then looked up into the lyrics and the translation and it was indeed exactly as I understood it, which didn´t surprise me because I just knew that I understood it. So that has happened to me only once and only for one of the replays of the songs, but if it was possible in those 5 min of the song, just imagine how awesome would it be if we were able to do it all the time!, we definitely have the capability to do it no doubt about it, but what could trigger it or activate that in us I have no idea, maybe some mindfulness stuff, maybe that´s the oneness spiritual people are always talking about, I don´t know.
+Poeta enlaluna oh dude u just forgot that u already looked up for the lyrics b4 and its only ur mind playing with u lol
The crazy part is that his internal monologue was in Mandarin.
that's weird. I hope I would wake up tomorrow morning speaking fluent Cantonese or French.
I burned the midnight oil studyinh for my biology test at night and when I woke up I forgot everything :o
It is time for us to be more open towards foreign cultures like Ben so we can promote peace.
Western countries are the most multicultural countries in the world, so relatively speaking, we're doing very well.
His high school Mandarin teacher must have been amazing. All I remember from my Spanish in high school is "atira la basura en la basurera".
I thought it was one of those things where a person suddenly started to speak a language they didn't know before. This phenomenon is often rumoured to be caused by demonic possession.
TheSeductiveArts
i just meant that the video title misrepresented the story and gave it seem more mysterious than it is. I thought oh shit is this a supernatural event caught on camera? Instead it was some ordinary medical shit
Arsène Lupin He's a skin walker. The first person it saw spoke Chinese so it imitated her until it realized it fucked up. Apparently they're prevalent in Australia because I've heard other accounts of them there.