Learning English via transplant

The Mail on Sunday reports that a French woman received a kidney of Princess Diana’s in Toulouse in 1997 and is now peppering her conversation with fragments of English. There are a number of suspicious elements to the story, however.

bq. “I found myself speaking English to my friends, something I don’t normally do because I have no reason to,” she says. “I cannot explain why I did this.”

bq. Is this evidence of a fanciful nature, or an indication she had indeed received an organ from an English-speaker? Improbable though it sounds, there are many documented accounts of organ recipients taking on characteristics of their donors. …

bq. Scientists have termed this phenomenon ‘cellular memory’. Professor Candice Pert, a molecular biologist, believes every cell has its own mind and, if transplanted, the cells of the first body carry messages into the second body.

I think Stephen King must have done something on this.

7 thoughts on “Learning English via transplant

  1. Haha – I think a lot of my students over the years have come to my lessons hoping for some kind of a miracle without actually having to do anything. It’s a good job they hadn’t read this story and been foolish enough to believe it, or they might have attacked me with scalpels! Talk about putting your heart into your work!

  2. I don’t know, David – there may be something in it. Don’t you think it’s suspicious that at more or less the same time this woman started speaking English, Princess Diana stopped?

  3. Des: well, I presume it’s pronounced Candice. Unfortunately the other names led nowhere, did they? I was checking up for Isabella.
    Isabella: Diana came out with one or two good phrases in her TV interview, but I presume she was coached for that. Apparently this woman is just producing fragments. It would be interesting if she were saying ‘There were three of us in this marriage’!

  4. >>It would be interesting if she were saying ‘There were three of us in this marriage’!

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