94-Year-Old Chinese Woman Woke Up From Coma Speaking Perfect English

An elderly Chinese woman has awoken from a coma speaking fluent English but cannot remember the language she's spoken all her life.

Daily Mail reports that retired teacher Liu Jieyu, 94, was left unconscious for two weeks after having a stroke.

Doctors weren't sure if she'd ever wake up, but sure enough, she arose and asked in perfect English,

Where am I? What is happening?

Jieyu used to teach English, but her family claims she has not spoken a word of it in over 30 years.

Her doctors are baffled, but one of them is confident she'll be able to speak Chinese again relatively soon.

Doctor Tao Hou said,

I can't ever remember having a case like this before but we anticipate with proper rehabilitation and rest she should regain the ability to speak Chinese. We assume that the area dealing with her ability to speak Chinese has been damaged, but brain cells to have an ability to repair themselves to a certain extent we would hope to see at least some improvement.

Jieyu's family said she stopped using English after she retired and went to live with her family in Changsha, a city in the Hunan province.

Although mind-boggling, this is far from the first case of someone waking up from a coma with the ability to speak a foreign tongue.

Following a car accident, Australia's Ben McMahon, 22, began speaking Mandarin, and a 13-year-old Croatian girl woke up from a coma somehow speaking German.

Dr. Pankaj Sah of the Queensland Brain Institute offered an explanation last year, according to Daily Mail.

He said when McMahon suffered his accident, the parts of the brain that retained English could have been damaged, while those that had absorbed any Mandarin he had heard were awakened.

Jieyu's apparent transformation may also be due to the type of stroke she had.

She experienced a cerebral infarction, which limits the blood supply instead of eliminating it entirely.

Citations: Chinese teacher wakes up after stroke no longer able to speak her native language but fluent in English (Daily Mail)