Xenoglossia - the ability to speak a previously unknown language

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Xenoglossia is the suddenly acquired ability to speak a previously unknown language. From time to time, the press in different countries reports on people who, in a state of hypnosis or after a traumatic brain injury, suddenly begin to communicate in a foreign language - and at the same time consider themselves personalities from the past. Many scientists believe that in this case there is a manifestation of reincarnation, that is, the transmigration of souls, but science is not yet able to clearly explain this phenomenon.

Devil's accomplices

Until the beginning of the 20th century, there was no research approach to this problem. It was believed that the sudden mastery of someone else's speech is nothing more than an obsession, submission to the will of the devil.

It is known that in 1634 in London, several novices from the monastery of St. Ursula suddenly spoke in languages previously unknown to them: Latin, Greek and Spanish. They were obliged to additionally fast and pray for deliverance from such a scourge.

Another documented case occurred at the end of the 19th century with an illiterate peasant, Giovanni Agrazzio, who lived in southern Italy. He started having problems with memory, he stopped recognizing acquaintances, and a little later he spoke in languages that were incomprehensible to those around him. The peasant was examined at the local provincial university, where it was established that he had perfectly mastered Latin, Greek, Turkish and other languages, the total number of which is no less than ten. To cure such a strange disease, the church ministers performed a ritual of exorcism over Agrazzio - but the peasant could not stand such a test and died during the ceremony.

What a car crash teaches

At the beginning of the 20th century, the French psychologist and physiologist, the 1913 Nobel Prize laureate Professor Charles Richet, became interested in the sudden ability to speak foreign languages. It was he who introduced the word "xenoglossia" into scientific use (from the Greek "xenos" - "alien" and "gloss" - "language", "speech"). He also became the author of the famous phrase about this phenomenon: "The facts are undeniable, but they cannot be explained today."

Nevertheless, the study of xenoglossy made it possible to reveal some of its regularities. First of all, the phenomenon was often preceded by brain damage associated with trauma or stroke.

Karina Shchipkova, a senior researcher at the speech pathology department of the Institute of Psychiatry of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, who studied this phenomenon, claims that in case of cerebral disorders, information that was laid down in childhood is erased much more difficult than learned in an adult state. In other words, trauma stimulates memories of things that seemed long forgotten.

In 1998, at the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry, a 70-year-old woman was observed who, after a stroke, forgot her native Russian language and began to speak Hebrew. It turned out that she heard it from neighbors when she was a little girl and lived with her parents in Ukraine.

In 1978, Nikolai Lipatov from the Lipetsk region came under a lightning strike, after which he began to speak fluently in English, German and French. And in 1979, in the Tula region, a truck accidentally pushed pensioner Gennady Smirnov to the fence - and after the incident he suddenly took possession of German.

The famous Czech racer Matej Kus in 2007 after a car accident spoke fluently in pure English, although before that he spoke it with gross errors. However, after the final recovery, Matei Kus also suddenly lost this wonderful ability.

Ancient Egyptian woman from England

Another feature of xenoglossia is that it is often inherent in people who easily fall into trance or are hypnotized.

In the middle of the 19th century, the daughter of a member of the New York Supreme Court of Appeals, Laura Edmons, took part in sessions of spiritualism as a medium. At that moment she could speak a dozen foreign languages, such as Polish, French, Italian and others. Experts who were attracted to research this phenomenon noted the girl's rich vocabulary and perfect pronunciation.

Beginning in 1927, 13-year-old Yvette Clarke, who lives in Blackpool, England (in the materials of the Society for Psychical Research of Great Britain, she appeared under the pseudonym Rosemary), after participating in a seance, she suddenly began to speak Ancient Egyptian and said that she had once been a dancer in a temple, and then she became a servant of the wife of the pharaoh, and now the queen at some moments appears next to her and talks to her.

A local psychologist recorded in detail all the words of the speech she reproduced and gave the recording to the famous Egyptologist from Oxford, Alfred Howard Hulm. It turned out that Rosemary really speaks the ancient Egyptian language, which fell out of use more than a thousand years ago, so there could be no question of any childhood memories.

Researchers have been studying Rosemary's abilities for several years. It was possible to establish that her interlocutor, the queen, lived in the XIV century BC and was the fourth wife of Pharaoh Amenhotep III.

Rosemary's case was so unique that some skeptics suggested that she had studied ancient Egyptian on her own using available dictionaries and grammars. The country's leading Egyptologists prepared 12 tricky, from their point of view, questions, which could only be answered by an expert of their level. The girl gave the answers easily and without hesitation.

Indian in female form

Dr. Ian Stevenson, who heads the Perceptual Research Unit at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, has been researching the sudden ability to speak a foreign language after hypnosis or meditation for many years. In his 1974 book Twenty Cases of Alleged Reincarnation, he described more than two thousand cases that occurred at different times and in different countries. Here are the most striking ones.

In 1955, a hypnotized woman from Pennsylvania began to communicate in Swedish. Her voice hardened, she introduced herself as Jensen Jacobi, who lives in Sweden in the 17th century and works on a farm.

In 1970, American pastor Jay Carroll, addicted to hypnosis, put his wife Dolores into a trance, trying to relieve her of a headache - and she suddenly began to call herself Gretchen and speak German. The pastor became interested in this phenomenon and turned to specialists for help. A total of 22 hypnosis sessions were performed with Dolores, they were recorded on tape. The linguists who studied the notes concluded that only a person for whom German is their mother tongue can speak like that.

In 1974, in India, 32-year-old Uttara Khuddar, during intensive meditation, forgot her native language and switched to Bengali, claiming that her name was Sharada. Experts who communicated with her confirmed that the woman really speaks the language of the early 19th century, and does not in any way perceive the new words that appeared later.

A similar case happened in Russia - however, already at the end of the 20th century, so it was not included in Stevenson's book. At the performance, where the hypnotist participated, a woman named Lydia spoke in an incomprehensible dialect, her voice changed and began to resemble a man's. The spectators present at the session turned on the tape recorder. According to the record given to linguists, it turned out that Lydia spoke the language of the Canadian Ottawa Indians and considered herself a man named Kevatin ("North Wind"), who lived in the early 19th century.

Why would a soldier know so many languages?

Dr. Stevenson explained such phenomena by the theory of transmigration of souls, when, after trauma or in a trance state, a person suddenly awakens in a person, which he once was.

The same idea was expressed by another authoritative scientist - Australian psychologist Peter Ramster, who published the book "Searches for Past Lives", in which he spoke about his experiments. He put his student Cynthia Henderson into a hypnotic state - after which she could communicate freely in Old French.

But many researchers doubt that xenoglossia is caused only by the transmigration of souls, since there are facts that go beyond the scope of this theory. For example, the Swiss psychologist Theodore Flournoy in 1899 studied the phenomenon of a woman named Helen, who, in a state of hypnosis, claimed to know the Martian language - and talked about its structure and linguistic features. Flournoy consulted with linguists - and they argued that this is indeed the speech of intelligent beings, which has its own laws, but not a single people of the Earth had such a language.

In 2000, Russian newspapers reported on a resident of Anapa, Natalya Beketova, who spoke many languages and dialects, including ancient Arabic, Farsi, Swahili, and others - more than a hundred in total. According to Natalia, she was once a French youth named Jean d'Evert, who died in Russia during the war with Napoleon. He was killed with a bayonet blow, and Natalya has a large birthmark on his body in the place where the bayonet entered. It can be assumed that in this case there is reincarnation - but it does not explain the knowledge of other languages in any way.

Some scholars have suggested that xenoglossia may be a manifestation of a telepathic connection between modern humans and people from the past - although how exactly it is carried out, no one can say.