Compulsive Foreign Language Syndrome: Man Becomes Obsessed With Speaking Fake French

You may have seen headlines such as: Florida Man Woke Up In A Motel Room Speaking Only Swedish. Or: Englishman wakes up speaking Welsh after stroke (“Rare brain disorder left English-speaking Alun Morgan only able to communicate in Welsh”). The first case was likely due to a fugue state, a type of dissociative disorder involving loss of personal identity and aimless wandering (Stengel, 1941). The second seems like an unusual example of bilingual aphasia involving loss of the ability to speak one's native language (rather than the more commonly affected second language).

Perhaps you've even seen paranormal claims like:

Under Hypnosis or Past Life Regression, A Physician's Wife Starts Speaking Swedish

. . .  In sessions conducted from 1955 to 1956, when Tania was under hypnosis, a personality emerged who spoke Swedish, a language that neither Tania nor Ken knew. As such, this represents a case of xenoglossy, where an individual can speak a language that has not been learned through normal means.

Tania was born in Philadelphia and as such, English was her native language. Her parents, who were Jewish, were born in Odessa, Russia. No one in the family had ever been to Scandinavia and they knew no one who could speak Swedish.

Xenoglossy is “the putative paranormal phenomenon in which a person is able to speak or write a language he or she could not have acquired by natural means.” Of course, there's always a logical explanation for such cases, but magical thinking leads people to believe that such phenomena are proof of past lives and reincarnation.


A New Case of False Xenoglossy

An amusingly written clinical report describes a 50 year old Italian man who stopped speaking his native Italian and insisted on speaking broken and somewhat fake French after a neurological event (Beschin et al., 2016). An abnormality in his basilar artery blocked the necessary flow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), with hydrocephalus and brainstem vascular encephalopathy as a result. A typical example of the condition (known as megadolicho basilar artery) in another patient is shown below.

Fig. 1 (Thiex & Mull, 2006). (A) CSF flow obstruction (arrow). (B) megadolicho basilar artery.


The man had no previous psychiatric history and retained the ability to speak perfect Italian. The clinical report includes the only instance of the word “fling” that I recall seeing in a scientific journal, so I'll quote at length:

He had superficially learned French at school, used it in his 20's due to a fling with a French girl but he has not spoken it for about 30 years. In his professional life he used English as his second language. Before brain damage he never manifested a particular attachment to French culture or French cuisine. His accent is not due to dysarthria and he speaks polished and correct Italian, his mother tongue. However, he now states that French is his preferred language refusing to speak in Italian spontaneously.
. . .

JC's French is maladroit and full of inaccuracies, yet he speaks it in a fast pace with exaggerated intonation using a movie-like prosody and posing as a typical caricature of a French man. His French vocabulary is reduced and he commits several grammatical errors but he does not speak grammelot or gibberish and never inserts Italian terms in his French sentences. He uses French to communicate with everybody who is prepared to listen; he speaks French with his bewildered Italian relatives, with his hospital inmates, with the consultants; he spoke French even in front of the befuddled Committee deciding on his pension scheme. He claims that he cannot but speak in French, he believes that he is thinking in French and he longs to watch French movies (which he never watched before), buys French food, reads French magazines and seldom French books, but he writes only in Italian. He shows no irritation if people do not understand him when he speaks in French.

He performed well on picture naming and verbal fluency tests in Italian, although he first tried to name the item in French (substituting category names like ‘vegetable’ for the low frequency word ‘asparagus’). His episodic memory was poor and he could not recall autobiographical incidents from the previous few years (but could recall earlier memories). He performed well on most other cognitive tests. But he did show some psychiatric symptoms that were secondary to the brain injury.

However, he presents with some delusions of grandeur, sleep disturbances and has some compulsive behaviours: he buys unnecessarily large quantities of objects (e.g., needing two hangers he bought 70) and he makes tons of bread to his wife's chagrin. He also shows unjustified euphoria (which he labels joie de vivre): for example in the morning he opens the windows and shouts bonjour stating that it is a wonderful day. He manifests signs of social disinhibition, for example proposing to organise a singing tour for his daughter's teenage friend or offering French lessons to his neighbours. These symptoms are indicative of secondary mania (Santos, Caeiro, Ferro, & Figueira, 2011) and were drug-resistant.

This is certainly a highly usual consequence of megadolicho basilar artery, but note that the subtitle of Beschin et al.'s article is “A clinical observation not a mystery.” There is no true xenoglossy here (or anywhere else, for that matter).


Further Reading

Man Wakes Up From Coma Speaking New Language: The media’s love of xenoglossy

Foreign Language Syndrome – “There actually isn’t a legitimate foreign language syndrome...”


References

Beschin, N., de Bruin, A., & Della Sala, S. (2016). Compulsive foreign language syndrome: A clinical observation not a mystery. Cortex DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2016.04.020

Stengel, E. (1941). On the Aetiology of the Fugue States. British Journal of Psychiatry 87 (369): 572-599.

Thiex R, Mull M. (2006). Basilar megadolicho trunk causing obstructive hydrocephalus at the foramina of Monro. Surg Neurol. 65(2):199-201.

Jen speaks fake Italian on the IT Crowd.