Summary

This case alerts readers to the occurrence of grammatical, nonsensical speech in a 14-year-old boy, an alarming symptom. Speech of this sort may be caused by serious medical conditions such as cerebral irritation and acute confusional states, but in this case it was most probably part of a sleepwalking episode associated with jetlag. Abnormal speech during sleepwalking has been described, but it is not well characterised. This report of somniloquy offers some descriptive phenomenology for such speech.