Lost in Translation: Dutch Teen Wakes from Surgery Speaking Only English

Imagine waking up from surgery and suddenly you can only speak a language that isn’t your own. That’s exactly what happened to this Dutch teenager.

A 17-year-old boy in the Netherlands experienced an unusual medical situation after a routine knee surgery. When he woke up from anesthesia following his soccer injury operation, he could only speak English and believed he was in the United States. Before this incident, he only used English during school language classes.

The situation became concerning when the teen didn’t recognize his parents and couldn’t understand Dutch, his native language. Hospital staff initially thought this might be normal confusion from anesthesia, but when he still couldn’t speak Dutch hours later, they called for psychiatric help.

Medical experts diagnosed the boy with foreign language syndrome (FLS), a very rare condition where patients suddenly switch to using a second language instead of their native tongue. This condition is extremely uncommon, with only about nine cases ever documented in medical literature. Most cases involve white males who switch to a language they learned later in life.

When examined by a neurologist, the teen showed no brain abnormalities. Interestingly, about 18 hours after surgery, he began understanding Dutch again but still couldn’t speak it. The breakthrough came when his friends visited the next day; suddenly, he could both understand and speak Dutch again.

This case is particularly noteworthy because FLS rarely affects children or teenagers. Doctors believe this may be the first formally documented case in an adolescent. The condition differs from foreign accent syndrome, where people retain their language but speak with what sounds like a foreign accent.

Doctors aren’t entirely sure why FLS occurs, though there have been other cases following anesthesia. Some medical experts question whether it’s truly a separate condition or simply a variation of emergence delirium—the temporary confusion that can happen as anesthesia wears off. The teen was discharged three days after his surgery, having fully recovered his ability to speak Dutch.

(Source: Live Science)