Shocking! Woman Lose The Ability To Speak English After Falling Off Of Her Bike

Hannah Jenkins is the UK woman who suffered a cycling incident that caused her to lose her ability to speak English. Growing up in a household where German was the primary language, Jenkins was used to speaking German with her family, but English with everyone else. 

After the bike incident, she realized she could no longer understand English. As time went on, Jenkins eventually regained some of her English speaking skills, but still struggles to understand the language and can only fluently speak German now.

In October of 2015, Hannah Jenkins was riding her bike in the UK while her partner Andrew Wilde was in Montana. It was during this time that Jenkins collided with another cyclist and was severely injured.

According to BBC, Jenkins was rushed to the hospital while Wilde got on the first plane back to the UK. After waking up in the hospital, Jenkins became confused because she couldn't understand a word of what people were saying to her.

"I couldn't understand anything. I felt as though I'd woken up in a foreign country and I couldn't understand why people weren't speaking to me in a way that I could understand,” said Jenkins, as reported by BBC.

Eventually, Jenkins was able to get on the phone with her sister Margaret, who spoke German. She was immediately relieved that someone understood her language and told her sister she didn’t understand why the doctors and nurses weren’t speaking English.

But when her sister told her they were, Jenkins was shocked. "The doctors didn't know I could speak German. It wasn't until they spoke to my sister that they realized,” said Jenkins.

Growing up, Jenkins and he family spoke mostly German, so that was her first language. She eventually learned English and became fluent in that as well. But for some reason, the accident caused her to forget the language entirely.

"I couldn't get my head around the fact that in the hospital they were speaking English. My brain had lost my ability to understand that," she said.

Doctors were eventually able to figure out what was happening. Turns out, Jenkins suffered what is known as“secondary language loss.”According to experts, this means that only the skills Jenkins had learned as a child remained in her brain.

"Our brains are very sensitive and anything that has the ability to disturb the computer in any way can potentially impact upon the words coming out. There is no algorithm that would follow that a specific injury will invariably result in the loss of German nouns or English grammar, but we do lose those bits,” said neurosurgeon Colin Shieff, as reported by BBC.

Days after being released from the hospital, Jenkins was still unable to speak English, which put a strain on her relationship as her partner didn’t understand German very well.

"I was listening to the radio a lot. I don't know how much I understood, but when my partner came that's when I learned how badly the language was affected,” says Jenkins.

The pair learned to manage by finding other ways to communicate. However, Wilde had to take time off work to completely dedicate himself to Jenkins. To this day, Jenkins is still a bit rusty in her English.

"I'm fine in the mornings, but by the afternoon the fatigue really kicks in and I switch in my mind to thinking in German. I'll write little notes to myself in German, and I just sort of almost power down that part of my brain that deals with communication, so that in the evening when my partner's back I can communicate again,” says Jenkins, via BBC.

Jenkins says she’s noticed other differences in her since the accident. For example, she has a slower reaction time and has picked up new skills and hobbies, like photography and shooting.

"Mentally I have to see that this is me now. I’m happy in my own skin again. So there's no reason why I can't just run with life as I am now,” said Jenkins.