Learning languages the hard way: car crash causes Czech to speak 'perfect English'

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Apparently he’d only just started to learn English, and he was much less than a fluent speaker before the accident.

The Daily Telegraph story has no clues regarding how this happened. Neither does anyone else. Medically, you’d be lucky to find anyone who’d be prepared to risk an opinion. Obviously the speech centers were affected, but the comprehension and memory were also involved.

My theory is that the accident, quite literally accidentally, opened up synaptic pathways. That the man later lost his ability to speak English, and had to talk to interviewers using an interpreter, indicates that the synaptic links didn’t stay open, and reverted to normal.

On the other hand, it may be that by merely crashing a vehicle, people can be taught English in a few minutes. If so the therapeutic possibilities are staggering. People might actually learn to speak the language properly. That would make television far less painful to watch. It might possibly free the world of quite a few celebrities. Many of these pests speak no known language, have nothing to say, and would probably die from the shock of suddenly overloaded brains which have never before had to produce actual meaning in their conversations.

Much the same could be said of windy panelists, voiceovers, sports commentators, politicians, management scientists, and market analysts, where a limited, overspecialized, vocabulary prevents any real information from being translated into English, or anything else.

It’s pretty clear from the last 5000 years of recorded history that few of the more verbose people on Earth have ever shut up, even after death. This may be the way to achieve some justice for the long suffering ears and minds of humanity. It’s a well known fact that listening to your own voice produces some strong reactions.

Imagine, though, if our global over-suppliers of ineloquence developed enough comprehension of the English language to actually understand what they’ve been saying… Instead of sending them to jail or rehab, they could be sentenced to listen to themselves.

This is a penalty which would no masochist, however dedicated, would touch. Imagine a world in which there was an actual deterrent to endless verbosity. A world in which someone could get a word in edgewise without use of firearms or explosives.

I think it’s worth checking out.