A Los Angeles woman started speaking Spanish to hotel staff, then realized: ‘I don’t speak Spanish’
Even with language barriers, people could still infer the meaning of a conversation through body language and context clues. But Tara Rule (@tara_rule), a model from Los Angeles, told TikTok that she was able to miraculously converse in Spanish with hotel staff.
“I did not know I spoke Spanish,” Rule said. She called her experience the “weirdest thing” to happen to her, like finding mushrooms under a bed.
Rule claimed that there were cleaning staff outside her hotel room. Although she didn’t need her room cleaned, she wanted to give her used towels to the lady outside.
Recounting the conversation (translated from Spanish), Rule said she asked, “Do you want these?” and the lady agreed.
“Yeah, do you want more towels?” The lady said, just to swap the ones she had.
“No, it’s okay. I’m only here for a night,” Rule explained.
“Are you sure?” The lady asked again, and Rule insisted.
“I’m sure, I don’t need anymore. Thank you, though. There’s plenty in there,” Rule replied. Then, the lady started talking about how hot it was outside. The model agreed with the lady’s sentiments before bidding her goodbye. When she closed the door, Rule did a double take.
The model alleged that she had been speaking Spanish during her interaction with the lady, which shouldn’t have been possible.
An unexplained history of speaking foreign languages
She thought she must have been speaking gibberish, so she went back out and asked the lady if she’d been speaking to her in Spanish.
“Was I just speaking correctly in Spanish?” Rule asked, and the lady agreed.
“I don’t speak Spanish,” the model clarified, leaving the lady confused. Another woman that was present thought Rule was just pranking them, but Rule stated that she was not a Spanish speaker.
The hotel staff Rule was speaking to even told her that her accent was “perfect.” This also left Rule befuddled, thinking she must be having an unexplained episode.
In a later video, Rule clarified that she had Spanish lessons in 2009 when she was in high school. However, Rule stated that she hadn’t spoken the language ever since. But this was not the first time Rule had a strange incident surrounding foreign languages.
“I do have a long history of neurological problems. I have a weird, genetic disorder,” she said. Rule recalled a memory of her as a child in the neurological ICU. A few months before her hospitalization, she had lived in Bulgaria for an extended period and was fluent in the language.
The hospital staff didn’t think she was going to wake up. But when Rule did, she said that the nurses were pointing to items and asking her to identify them. One of them pointed to orange juice, and Rule said that she replied in Russian. A nurse asked if she spoke Russian, but Rule was only familiar with Bulgarian at the time. When they asked her to identify other items, Rule started replying in Bulgarian.
They’re not the same language, but Rule said that she at least knew Bulgarian. Nevertheless, it didn’t explain her speaking abilities.
She seemed to be speaking Spanish
Rule retrieved the CCTV footage of her interaction with the hotel staff. Some Spanish speakers in Rule’s comment section claimed that she was speaking Mexican Spanish.
But what was making her speak a foreign language Rule was allegedly not fluent in? The model provided further explanation, saying that she had also recently gotten into a car accident that affected her brain.
A document showed that Rule has unilateral, one-sided damage that was observed in her brain. It stated, “This finding is consistent with some of the patient’s language issues since the accident, such as her problems with misassembled sentences in her speech and her difficulties understanding the speech of others.”
Rule concluded that her injury must be connected to her sudden ability to speak Spanish.
(featured images: Dmitriy Steinke, Tara Rule, Arturo Añez)
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