Foreign accent syndrome

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 between 1941 and 2006. There have been fifty recorded cases. [cite news |first=Sophie |last=Doughty |coauthors=Hope, Craig |title=Geordie to an East European |url=http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-evening-chronicle/tm_objectid=17325978&method=full&siteid=50081&headline=geordie-to-an-east-european-name_page.html |work=The Evening Chronicle |publisher=NCJ media limited |date=2006-07-03 |accessdate=2007-12-30 ]

Description

To the untrained ear, those with the syndrome sound as though they speak their native languages with a foreign accent; for example, an American native speaker of English might sound as though they speak with a British accent, or a native British speaker might speak with a New York American 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 patterns to have a different sounding accent. The change in speech is not the result of sufferers' adopting or imitating any accent; this is merely the perception of people who hear the sufferer speak.

Another theory is that, unlike a problem like aphasia, the language centers of the brain are entirely uninvolved. Instead, the person has lost the fine motor skills needed to pronounce phonemes with their usual accent. When they try to pronounce them, they find it sounds like have a different accent. For example, difficulty pronouncing the letter 'r' at the end of words might mean a person drops them at the end of words. This is done with a Boston accent, thus the person seems to speak with a Boston accent when trying to pronounce words ending in 'r'. To maintain a sense of normalcy and flow, someone with the syndrome then augments the accent effect by imitating the rest of the accent. Depending on how important a certain phoneme is to an accent, they might find a different accent much easier than before they suffered the loss of motor skills, and their usual accent very difficult to consistently pronounce.

Occurrences

One of the first recorded incidence of FAS was in a Czech studied in 1919. [Pick, A. 1919. Über Änderungen des Sprachcharakters als Begleiterscheinung aphasicher Störungen. Zeitschrift für gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, 45, 230–241.] However there had been an earlier reported case in 1907.Fact|date=March 2008

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. [Monrad-Krohn, G. H. "Dysprosody or Altered 'Melody of Language'." Brain 70 (1947): 405-15.]

Another well known case is that of Judi Roberts, also known as Tiffany Noel, who was born and raised in Indiana, USA. In 1999, at the age of 57, she had a stroke. After recovering her voice, she spoke with an accent in which resembled an English accent, though she never had been to Britain. [cite news |title= Stroke gives woman British accent |url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3235934.stm |work=BBC News |publisher= BBC|date=2003-11-25 |accessdate=2007-12-29] [cite news |first= Angie |last= Lewis |coauthors= Guin, Karen |title= Communicative Disorders Clinic Diagnoses Rare Foreign Accent Syndrome in Sarasota Woman |url= http://www.cohpa.ucf.edu/news/story_comdisclinic.cfm |publisher=University of Central Florida-College of Health and Public Affairs |accessdate=2007-12-29 ] Apart from an accent, she has begun using British vocabulary, such as "bloody", and "loo".

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, Italian and a Slovak accent. [cite news |first=Nigel |last=Bunyan |title=Geordie wakes after stroke with new accent |url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/04/naccent04.xml |work=Telegraph |publisher=Telegraph Media Group Limited |date=2006-07-04 |accessdate=2007-12-30 ] She was interviewed by BBC News 24 [cite news |title=Stroke gives woman foreign accent |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tyne/5144300.stm |work=BBC News |publisher=BBC |date=2006-07-04 |accessdate=2007-12-30 ] and appeared on the Richard and Judy show in the UK in July 2006 to speak of her ordeal.

More recently, in the July 2008 issue of the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, researchers from McMaster University published a study where a woman from Windsor, Ontario, after suffering a stroke, began speaking with what some people describe as a Newfoundland accent. [cite news |first= Raveeni |last=Naidoo |title= A Case of Foreign Accent Syndrome Resulting in Regional Dialect |url=http://cjns.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=searcharticlesresults,2,2; |publisher=the Canadian Journal of Neurological Science |date=2008-07-01 |accessdate=2008-07-03 ] [cite news |first= CBC News |title=Ontario woman gains East Coast accent following stroke |url=http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/080703/K070308AU.html |publisher=CBC News |date=2008-07-03 |accessdate=2008-07-03]

Ex England Coach and FC Twente manager, Steve McLaren, also gave a full post match interview with a Dutch accent, despite hailing from York.

References

* Dankovičová J, Gurd JM, Marshall JC, MacMahon MKC, Stuart-Smith J, Coleman JS, Slater A. "Aspects of non-native pronunciation in a case of altered accent following stroke (foreign accent syndrome)." Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 2001;15:195-218.
* Gurd JM, Bessell NJ, Bladon RA, Bamford JM. "A case of foreign accent syndrome, with follow-up clinical, neuropsychological and phonetic descriptions." Neuropsychologia 1988;26:237-51. PMID 3399041
* Gurd JM, Coleman JS, Costello A, Marshall JC. "Organic or functional? A new case of foreign accent syndrome." Cortex 2001;37:715-8. PMID 11804223 PSHAW

External links

*" [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hometruths/20050411_italian_accent.shtml Stroke gives man Italian accent] " at BBC Radio 4 Home Truths, 4 November 2005.
*" [http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1814284 I woke up with a foreign accent] " at ABC News.
* [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=IssueURL&_tockey=%23TOC%235992%232006%23999809994%23630045%23FLA%23&_auth=y&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=919e73b08e14bc4b3a5b436f869827c8 Journal of Neurolinguistics, Volume 19, Issue 5.] Special issue on foreign accent syndrome.
*http://www.utdallas.edu/research/FAS" Foreign Accent Syndrome Support Site created by researchers at University of Texas at Dallas.

ee also

* Susac's syndrome