speaking foreign language even you never studes these lanuages, is it mental illness?

i have heard from many people that some people speak foreign languages even they never studied it in life, and people says that its just because some superstatious things or they are psychic or they are control by ghosts, i want to know is this kind a mental illness?

There are brain injuries that can cause one to lose a language so only one remains (a girl starting to study German lost her native tongue in a coma and could only speak the German she'd learned: http://news.discovery.com/human/coma...rl-german.html) and there is "Foreign Accent Syndrome", another brain anomoly: http://www.healthmango.com/healthgen...notable-cases/ but no one has ever spoken a known foreign language they did not ever come in contact with/study.

"Speaking in tongues" is a religious experience and is not a "language" and requires someone of the same religion to "interpret", etc. but is not a mental illness.

here in New York (usa) speaking /communicating in different languages shows one main thing - you may be bilingual. we live in a bilingual world where everything is out in many languages /ways of communicating. even babies are being unconsciously exposed to many languages through sesame street, baby einstien, tv commercials, hearing people in passing when their parents have them out in public, movies... even the schools here are teaching in englsh and other languages. children are always making up their own language /codes when playing pretend and other games.. the preschool here has a deaf student so all the teachers learned sign launguage and they automatically sign and talk at the same time even though most of the students dont know sign and the deaf child doesnt hear the english...

any movies I rent or buy now and tv shows I watch also have subtitles in french, spanish, german, english and others..

with all the different ways there are for exposing people to different languages theres no need to formally study languages any more. and its no longer considered a mental disorder symptom nor criteria.

what is some mental disorder criteria /symptoms and physical health symptoms is talking complete nonsense, gibberish.. words that can not be transposed into any patterns of speech or communication..like moans, bblmb, dddozx..and any other combination of letters and vowels that mean absolutely nothing and have no pattern to them.. these are signs of things like stroke, tumors, aneurisms, schizophrenia, aphasia, alzheimers, doing drugs and alcohol, and others.

Although I only had some rudimentary Spanish classes and am certainly not fluent, when I was in hospital recovering from a traumatic brain injury I was told (I don’t remember much about the month I was in ICU) that I would occasionally speak Spanish to the nurses, and that my Spanish was correct and understandable. This likely comes from storage in the procedural part of implicit memory, which is accessed separately from explicit memory.

All that said I would be very skeptical of stories of people speaking languages that have never been exposed to. Language has to be stored somewhere in memory to be accessed, whether that access is performed consciously or not.

Sometimes when I am first coming awake in the morning, mid-way between sleep and alertness, I will hear parts of whatever I heard in a recent class (regardless of the subject). The hearing is taking place inside my head; it isn't really a voice so much as an impression, but it seems to be my voice, and I am repeating what I know I heard my professor say (not paraphrasing). What it tells me is that I do indeed have pertinent information stored in my brain, if only I could tap into it later, when fully alert. Your comment about speaking correct Spanish made me think of this; since you had a class, you were taught correct Spanish; just as I have been taught the formulae, facts, etc. that I later 'hear' when I am half-awake in the morning.

My intrest in asking question above is that my relative, who passes away few years back had used to do this thing like some he speaks Chines or may be japaness but he never every had any intrection with these languages.there family claims that some had done magic on him and it was right that he was not in his senses.i just trying to find is it possable that one can speak forenignue lang even never spoked before? if yes is it some kinda medical illness or their family was right about magic or ghost kind a things? thanks for your support and shaing

Just a correction on this one, it is this way NOW, but "speaking in tongues" was originally when one person started speaking a foreign language, and there were people who didn't speak his native language, but that foreign language, that could understand him. It happened as a miracle to make translators obsolete. Funny how things change...


ANYWAY, I think - and this is my own personal theory with no basis in any training, or concrete fact - that it's caused by the subconscious being able to come out. Our subconscious is really quite amazing, and can learn things far faster. Admittedly, the person would have have to have some contact with the language, but theoretically their subconscious learning of that language could come out and it would look like they'd "suddenly" learned a new language. I can't imagine it would last very long through.

I just do not know. Were your family members sure it was an actual language or did it just sound like Chinese or Japanese? Because I suppose it could have been some sort of aphasia. I would say that it wasn't magic or a ghost, but the longer I live, the more I realize I don't know much about those things.

IceCreamKid hits it on the head - was this actually Chinese/Japanese, that is to say, was the relative able to communicate with Chinese/Japanese speakers in their own language? Linguistic research has shown that young children who watch TV in a foreign language don't acquire the language, as opposed to, for instance, children who have a babysitter or au pair who interact with them in a foreign language. Interaction and/or conscious volition are key: you don't learn a language well enough to communicate unless you either interact in it or else are consciously trying to acquire it (when you watch a film with subtitles, for instance.)

Magic or spiritual influences are a different matter, which (unlike the linguistics issue) I'm not competent to comment on.

I would love to read any of that research you wrote of. I know many elementary students that have learned french and spanich from sesame street and other childrens shows, they come to the crisis center and are able to converse fully with my french and spanish speaking co workers. we also have two spanish speaking 7th graders that have never taken any spanish classes and do not have any spanish speaking relatives, they learned the language on sesame street. they are helping the crisis center get their class up to speed in spanish, for a couple of children going through the adoption process with a family in the area so that these mexican children will be able to fit in with their peers better.

I also deal with many children of many nationalities and languages. Right now Im very interested in anything about children and languages and how they learn it and would love to also read the other side of this language issue.