Mystery as fluent Welsh-speaking man lost language after horror car crash

A university student suffered a temporary loss of his Welsh fluency after a car crash, leaving him feeling like a "foreigner" among his peers.

Ellis Pears, a 19-year-old law student at Aberystwyth University, was concussed in November 2024 when his car flipped after he swerved to avoid another vehicle on a muddy country road.

Days later, Mr Pears, whose first language is English but who had always been fluent in Welsh, found himself unable to speak the language.

He described feeling cut off, struggling to maintain both his academic performance and social connections, while also battling flashbacks, anxiety, and persistent brain fog.

He believes the concussion triggered his language difficulties, and his low mood and daily nightmares and panic attacks made it even harder to concentrate.

Over time, as his mental health improved, so did his Welsh, and he can now speak the language at university level again, and panic attacks typically occur only when he sees a car crash.

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Mr Pears, who is from Cardiff, said: “I felt like a foreigner in a different country because I couldn’t understand people around me, and not many people knew English so didn’t understand me.

“I went from being able to do university essays on human rights laws to not being able to build a Lego set.”

Mr Pears began studying at Aberystwyth University in autumn 2024.

That was until November, when his day-to-day life “completely changed”.

One morning he was driving his 2013 Ford KA to a friend’s house down a country road about five miles outside Aberystwyth.

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After a storm the previous night, he was being especially careful because of the amount of mud on the roads.

But, he said, a car came around a corner and drove on to his side of the road and he had to “choose between” being hit by the oncoming 4×4 or swerving, so he swerved.

“In the moment, I remember it spinning and thinking ‘Crap, this is out of my control’ – there was nothing I could do,” Mr Pears said.

The car flipped three times and eventually came to a stop. Mr Pears then “went into survival mode” with “so much adrenaline” – he said he climbed out of the car through a window and began searching for his phone.

After 20 minutes he found it in a field next to the lane and rang the police - who then arrived to secure the road and check Mr Pears over.

He only had a cut on the back of his head from a piece of glass, but went to Bronglais Hospital the same day to be checked.

He was diagnosed with a concussion and, about 24 hours later, “once the adrenaline wore off” he “completely mentally crashed”.

He said he had “brain fog” and could barely follow the instructions of a simple Lego set.

A few days after the crash, he noticed he was also struggling to speak Welsh.

He believes this was because of the concussion, and his low mood made his ability to concentrate even harder.

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At university, one third of his course was in Welsh, including essays and lectures, and all of his friends and housemates spoke Welsh “constantly” to each other.

According to the 2021 Census, 17.8 per cent of the population in Wales speak Welsh, and in Ceredigion, the county where Aberystwyth is located, 45.3 per cent speak Welsh.

Mr Pears said: “I was just sat there and didn’t write a thing during the entire lecture – I couldn’t comprehend any of it.

“I tried emailing my lecturer in Welsh but I couldn’t get the words together, couldn’t do the formalities and the grammar or even the most basic Wenglish, which is slang Welsh.

“A lot of my mates at university only speak Welsh, it was their first language and their English is poor so I suddenly couldn’t have conversations with my friends.”

Mr Pears also suffered from low mood, anxiety and flashbacks. He was not formally diagnosed, but also believes he was experiencing PTSD.

He said: “My general mood was terrible – I was a right miserable sod.

“I wouldn’t smile, I was riddled with anxiety, permanently exhausted.

“I wasn’t sleeping properly – it would take me hours to get to sleep, and even then, I would be up every half an hour.

“I’d have panic attacks before bed every single night, my whole body would shake and my neck and knees would jerk and I’d be physically in pain.”

In December 2024, he tried taking antidepressants but felt they numbed his emotions and did not work well for him.

By June 2025, he noticed a significant improvement in both his mood and his language skills.

Mr Pears believes that as his mental health improved, his ability to concentrate increased, which in turn helped his language skills recover.

Looking back on his experiences, he said: “It made me think a lot about my priorities – so going home and spending time with family and going out with mates instead of focusing so much on work.”

For support, visit: www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/mental-health-services.