Surprised 3-year-old baby fluently speak English though never contacted

O'Neal Mahmoud, a 3-year-old boy in an Arab-speaking Druze family in the Golan Plateau, Israel, made the doctors astounded by his ability to speak English with his English accent despite never being exposed This foreign language.

According to Odditycentral, named after legendary basketball player Shaquille O'Neal, O'Neal Mahmoud did not speak until 2 years old. At that time, he started making sounds that were indeterminate, then some time later started speaking English fluently and using phrases and sentences like "my dear" or "oh my goodness" It was never used in the village where he lived near Majdal Shams town of the Druze, northern Israel.

What's even more strange is that O'Neal doesn't really know the Arabic equivalent of the English words he says.

A speech therapist and clinical linguist who has examined the boy has concluded that his English level is equivalent to a 3-year-old growing up in a speaking family. He, meanwhile, has a much lower level of Arabic - his mother's native language.

Little O'Neal Mahmoud.

"I don't understand every word, and sometimes I say to him," Yes, okay "and I don't understand what it is saying," O'Neal's father, Yahya Shams, shared with Channel 10. , he appeared on Israel's TV show "Faces in Real Life" .

The boy's parents, who did not speak English, confirmed that the boy had never been abroad and did not watch many television programs in English.

However, he somehow managed to say complicated words like "motorcycle," "rectangle" or "waterfall", without knowing the equivalent words in Arabic.

Because the boy's Arabic speaking ability was too low compared to other children of his age, O'Neal was taken to a Druze nursery school with an English-speaking teacher.

However, he still had trouble communicating with his parents and other children at school. His family is concerned that if his Arabic speaking skills do not improve, he will have difficulty in integrating with the villagers.

Irit Holman, a nurse, recounted that O'Neal's parents complained for the first time that the boy was completely speechless. Later, they contacted her again to complain that the boy was speaking English.

"And then they called me again and said he had a problem: He could speak, but he spoke like the King of England," Holman said in the program.

As a medical professional, this nurse could not explain that it was due to reincarnation - a central tenet of the Druze, but she also wondered if the boy was simply a skill of memorization and skill. Great Assembly, why did you not fluent in Arabic first.

Experts from Channel 10 consulted O'Neal's extraordinary ability that this could be a case of possessing foreign language ability (xenoglossy ), a mysterious phenomenon when one can say one. language they cannot comprehend through conventional methods.

However, evidence of this phenomenon is entirely anecdotal, and according to Wikipedia, there is no scientific evidence that this is a real phenomenon.

Dr. Khaloub Qa'awar, speech therapist and clinical linguist, and neurosurgeon Keren Ben Itzhak both told Channel 10 that they had never met or heard of the case. like O'Neal Mahmoud boy.