'I could speak Welsh fluently - until I crashed my car'

A STUDENT who suffered concussion fter a car crash temporarily lost his fluency in Welsh, leaving him cut off from friends and feeling like a “foreigner” at his Welsh-speaking university, while also enduring flashbacks, anxiety and brain fog.

- ELLIE GOSLEY AND MOLLY POWELL

Ellis Pears, 19, a law student at Aberystwyth University, said he was driving down a muddy country road in November 2024 when another car drove on to the wrong side of the road, forcing him to swerve and causing his car to flip over, leaving him concussed.

A few days later, Ellis, whose first language is English but who had always been fluent in Welsh, said he suddenly struggled to speak Welsh. This left him feeling isolated, as a third of his university course is in Welsh and many of his peers spoke low-level English.

He believes the concussion triggered his language difficulties, while 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.

Ellis, 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 stayed in my room and I didn’t go to lectures for four weeks after my language got worse, then I'd be surrounded by people in my flat that I couldn't understand.

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

Ellis began studying at Aberystwyth University in autumn 2024, and after a few months he was “starting to settle in”. 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.

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, forcing him to “choose between” being hit by the oncoming 4x4 or swerving.