http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3235934.stm
An American woman has been left with a British accent after having a stroke.
This is despite the fact that Tiffany Roberts, 61, has never been to Britain. Her accent is a mixture of English cockney and West Country.
Doctors say Mrs Roberts, who was born and bred in Indiana, has a condition called foreign accent syndrome.
This rare condition occurs when part of the brain becomes damaged. This can follow a stroke or head injury. There have only been a few documented cases.
Mrs Roberts discovered she had a British accent after recovering her voice following a stroke in 1999.
“When people first started asking me where in England I was from and a family member asked why am I talking that way, that is when I became very conscious that a part of me had died during the stroke,” she said.
Four years on, she still struggles to convince people that she is a born and bred American.
"People in America accuse me of lying when I say I was born in Indiana.
"They would say ‘What are you saying that for? Where in England are you from?’
“I would insist that I am not.”
A tape recording of her voice before the stroke shows Mrs Roberts used to speak with a broad and relatively deep accent. She now speaks in a much higher pitch.
Doctors are still trying to find out exactly why foreign accent syndrome occurs.
But Dr Jack Ryalls of the University of Central Florida, said it is a real medical condition, which can occur after a patient has a brain injury.
“They recover to various degrees. When they don’t recover or when they only have very, very residual effects left its heard as an accent. Its a real phenomenon. It just hasn’t been documented very often.”
Scientists at Oxford University are among those trying to get to the bottom of the syndrome.
Last year, they confirmed that patients can develop a foreign accent without ever having been exposed to the accent.
This is because they haven’t really picked up the accent. Their speech patterns have changed. Injury to their brain causes them to lengthen syllables, alter their pitch or mispronounce sounds. These changes make it sound like they have picked up an accent. They may lengthen syllables.
The first case of foreign accent syndrome was reported in 1941 in Norway, after a young Norwegian woman suffered shrapnel injury to the brain during an air raid.
Initially, she had severe language problems from which she eventually recovered. However, she was left with what sounded like a strong German accent and was ostracized by her community.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/572528.stm
A woman who suffered a minor stroke now cannot stop speaking in a French accent.
Wendy Hasnip, who does not speak French and has only been to the country once for a weekend trip to Paris, has been left with a Gallic accent.
Mrs Hasnip, 47, of Sevenoaks, Kent, previously had a Yorkshire accent before the stroke at the beginning of November.
Doctors have identified the condition as a possible case of Foreign Accent Syndrome, which is known to have affected a handful of people world-wide.
It is thought to be linked to the way in which the brain tissue is damaged after a stroke, though it is not fully understood by neuro-psychologists.
Mrs Hasnip said: "I was OK for a fortnight, then I began to stammer, which turned into an up and down voice. By the end of the week I was speaking as I am now.
“I don’t speak French, I didn’t do O-level French, I have no contact with France at all.”
She has been speaking with a French accent for three weeks and has been advised she may get her normal voice back, though this could be any time from days to years.
She added: “I have been laughing my way through it from the beginning. There are much worse things than being left with a French accent.”
The first known case of the condition occurred during World War Two when a Norwegian woman was struck on the head, leaving her with a German accent, which caused her to be ostracised by her local community.
Dr Jennifer Gurd, co-director for the Medical Research Council’s neuro-psychology unit in Oxford has been researching foreign accent syndrome for 15 years.
She said: "What we find very interesting about the changes in accent is that they may be indicating that in the human mind there is a separate, independent module for accents and human language.
“The changes that we have observed have shown that they are consistent with changes belonging to a foreign accent.”