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An Australian man who woke from a week-long coma after a horrific car crash found he could only speak Mandarin.

English-speaking Ben McMahon, 22, says he woke up and saw a nurse who looked Asian standing by his bed and said to her, 'Excuse me nurse, I feel really sore here' in Chinese.

He then asked the nurse for a piece of paper and pen and he wrote on it in Mandarin: "I love my mum, I love my dad, I will recover."

His new-found language skills baffled his doctors and family.

Despite taking Mandarin at school, Ben had never been fluent at the language.

"I wasn't consciously thinking I was speaking Mandarin, it was what just came out and it was what was most natural to me," he said.

(Image: Network Ten/ The Project)

It took Ben two or three more days to recall how to speak English.

Since then, Ben's language skills have opened up new opportunities for him including leading Chinese tours of his hometown and even hosting a Mandarin television program.

Now the Melbourne man has moved to Shanghai to study commerce at university.

He said he was fortunate to be alive and to be able to speak a second language.

But what happened to Ben is not the first of its kind.

In 2010, a 13-year-old Croatian girl woke up had replaced her fluency in her native language with speaking German.

More recently, a US navy veteran was found unconscious in a motel room and had no recollection of who he was and spoke fluent Swedish in July 2013.