Foreign accent syndrome

Overview
Foreign accent syndrome is a rare medical condition that usually occurs as a rare side effect of severe brain injury, such as a stroke or a head injury. As of 1996, there had been fewer than 15 reported cases of the syndrome.

Description
The syndrome causes people to speak their native language as if they had a foreign accent; for example, an American native speaker might speak with a French-sounding accent. However, researchers at Oxford University have found that certain, specific parts of the brain were injured in some foreign accent syndrome cases, indicating that certain parts of the brain control various linguistic functions, and damage could result in altered pitch or mispronounced syllables, causing the speech to have a different sounding accent. The change in speech is not the result of people suffering from the syndrome adopting or imitating any accent; this is merely the perception of people who hear the sufferer speak.

The first recorded incidence of FAS was in a Czech studied in 1919. A well-known case of foreign accent syndrome occurred in Norway in 1941 after a young woman, Astrid L., suffered a head injury from shrapnel during an air-raid. After apparently recovering from the injury she was left with what sounded like a strong German accent and was shunned by her fellow Norwegians.

Another case of foreign accent syndrome occurred to Linda Walker, a 60 year old woman from the Newcastle area. After a stroke, her normal Geordie accent was transformed and has been variously described as resembling a Jamaican, as well as a French Canadian, and a Slovak accent. She was interviewed by BBC News 24 and appeared on the Richard and Judy show in the UK in July 2006 to speak of her ordeal.

Usually, it is very traumatic for stroke patients such as these to find that their accent has unexpectedly changed.