American Father Who Doesn’t Speak Spanish Turns Fluent Whenver He Has Surgery

Original article on OddityCentral.com – a blog on oddities and wacky news http://www.odditycentral.com/

Stephen Chase was 19 years old when he woke up from a knee surgery speaking fluent Spanish despite only being able to count to 10 in the foreign language before the operation. Despite having only minimal knowledge of Spanish, he was able to converse fluently in Spanish for about 20 minutes after waking up from the surgery, before going back to English.

“I did not speak Spanish. I had a year in high school when I’d had a Spanish class,” Chase told LadBible. “It was really beginner level, it was low level. Maybe I could count to 10 and knew a couple of phrases here and there.”

Photo: Dan Gold

The father-of-three from Salt Lake City, Utah, doesn’t remember speaking Spanish, just that nurses were asking him to speak English after waking up from the surgery, which made him really confused. He recalls everything he said to them in English, and it was only later that he found out he spoke fluent Spanish.

The 33-year-old attorney was diagnosed with Foreign Language Syndrome (FLS) an extremely rare medical condition, with only around 100 confirmed cases on record since it was discovered in 1907. According to the National Library of Medicine, it can be caused by a number of factors, including brain injuries and tumors, psychological stress, and general anaesthesia.

Chase’scase stands out because he has exhibited Foreign Language Syndrome repeatedly after several surgeries over more than a decade. Over that period, he underwent several surgeries for sports-related injuries and, more recently, a septoplasty, and every time he woke up from the anesthesia, he spoke fluent Spanish.

Photo: Unsplash

“The nurses say they ask me questions like ‘how are you feeling?’ and ‘am I in pain?’ after waking up, and I answer the questions in Spanish,” Stephen Chase said. “In my head, I’m just speaking and I don’t understand why they can’t understand me.”

Asked why he thinks he speaks Spanish of all languages, the 33-year-old man said he believes it has something to do with growing up around Hispanic people and constantly hearing the language, despite never bothering to understand it.

Apparently, FLS is different from the equally rare Foreign Accent Syndrome, in which people speak in their native language but develop a foreign accent.

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