Croatian Teen Reportedly Wakes Up From Coma Speaking Fluent German

Doctor's are baffled by a 13-year-old Croatian girl who fell into a coma - and woke speaking fluent German.

The girl's parents said their daughter had only just started studying German at school and had been trying to read German books and watch German television, but had been struggling with the language.

Since waking from a 24-hour coma, thought to be caused by high body heat, the girl has been able to speak German at a far higher level than before - and unable to speak Croatian.

The case has shocked Croatian doctors at Split's KB Hospital. German speaking doctors have had to be brought in to assist with the case.

Psychiatric expert Doctor Mijo Milas who has been involved in the case told the Daily Mail, "In earlier times this would have been referred to as a miracle, we prefer to think that there must be a logical explanation - its just that we haven't found it yet."

Comments

[bqf7]

05:34 PM on 04/22/2010

#1 sign of good journalism: Headline begins "For real?"

[Ira7]

12:09 PM on 04/22/2010

People are so gullible.

[Nolana]

09:44 PM on 04/21/2010

I remember reading something a few years ago about a man from Massachusetts, I think, who fell off his bicycle and hit his head, and when he came to he spoke with a strong French accent. I don't know if he could speak French... but his English was strongly accented.

[CaptainEville]

04:46 PM on 04/21/2010

Like Sun, she just needs to find her Jin.

[Mitzy]

02:55 PM on 04/21/2010

Very interesting. Himmler thought the Croatians were "too savage with the Jews."

[Crushy]

01:48 PM on 04/21/2010

this happened on the tv show Lost too...
Sun got hit on the head and could all the sudden no longer speak English.......We've all been assured she will be fine so Im sure this girl will be too

[RedBrown]

12:24 PM on 04/21/2010

In earlier times, she would have been burned...

[ShirleyM]

08:48 AM on 04/21/2010

What the article neglects to tell you is that in Croatia children start learning German and English in most public schools from the first grade. They even have pre-schools which spend an hour or two a day concentrating on these two languages. In addition, if she was knowledgeable enough to be reading German books and sitting through German tv, she obviously already knew basic German. This is not a miracle, it's just an example of how much the human brain can absorb without us realizing it.
I'm sure her Croatian will come back soon, it's in there, just like the German was.

[loveobama]

05:50 AM on 04/21/2010

Something similar to this girl's story happened at Edenvale Hospital in Johannesburg a few years ago. A middle aged English speaking man woke up from a coma and could only speak Zulu. This continued for about a week and his family were worried because he could not speak any English. But after he switched back to English he could not speak or understand Zulu again.

[philly282]

01:26 PM on 04/20/2010

Der Master Race....Derwinisim

[SilentSolidarity]

04:18 AM on 04/20/2010

Fascinating!

[scorpioman]

08:25 PM on 04/19/2010

it was probably OKTOBERFEST!

[scorpioman]

08:23 PM on 04/19/2010

did her head spin around?

[robertdaniel]

04:26 PM on 04/19/2010

Ask Palin. She knows all about speaking in tongues.

[Riyter]

03:41 PM on 04/19/2010

This has been documented before by linguists. Sorry can't give you any links at this time, but it's not an unheard of phenomenon.

[homily]

04:20 PM on 04/19/2010

I remember a different phenomenon of a woman [British?] never drank alcohol needed a heart transplant. When she woke up the first thing she asked for was a beer. Turns out her heart donor loved beer.

[tanx8]

06:50 PM on 04/19/2010

There have been several cases where the patient takes on traits from the donor. Ironically it was DaVinci who said the heart stored memories, and to a certain extent he was right.

[AcaciaJules]

04:32 AM on 04/20/2010

Likely a form of aphasia. All the German knowledge was stored in her long term memory, she just hadn't created the proper neural pathways to access the information yet. This illness must have triggered some sort of aphasia, which affects the language centers of the brain.

It's not that hard to see happening.