Unexplained phenomena - foreign accent syndrome,

Although rare, foreign accent syndrome can cause individuals to speak their native dialect or language one morning and one from around the world the next day. So far, there have been about 100 cases in the world of people who suddenly started speaking, conditionally speaking, with a foreign accent. Speech is a pretty complicated thing. Today, I’m going to introduce you to a few cases where people started speaking weirdly, and where those different speeches are related to other languages. In fact, the question is whether this is about foreign accents or simply speech that we perceive as foreign, in relation to what we are used to hearing.

One of the first documented cases occurred during World War II in Norway. During his life in occupied Norway World War II was a difficult situation for all the inhabitants of the country. It was especially difficult for 30-year-old Astrid. It happened at an inconvenient time, after the 1941 bombing. She sustained head injuries while fleeing to the shelter and was thought not to survive, but recovered after a few days. At first, the right side of her body was paralyzed and she could not speak. After a while the paralysis receded, and her speech returned only in an altered form.

Contemporaries associated her new accent with German. In her case, the change in speech was preceded by a head trauma. It was a severe misfortune at the time because she spoke like a German in an occupied country. The woman was evidently never outside Norway and it was not clear to those who knew her what was going on. People who did not know her began to avoid her because they thought she was an unpleasant stranger, which was not at all convenient during the war. Neurologist Georg Herman Monrad-Krohn of the University of Oslo became interested in her disorder and concluded that her accent gave the impression that she was not a native Norwegian speaker.

Most of the reported cases occurred after some type of ‘cerebrovascular accident’. However, some reported cases were triggered by a simple headache, such as that of Englishwoman Sarah Colwill who developed a Chinese accent after a severe migraine:

Three contemporary cases

Only about 60 reported cases of foreign accent syndrome have been reported worldwide. However, the victims spoke many different languages, and the earliest was a Frenchman who suddenly developed an Alsatian accent back in 1907.

Although foreign accent syndrome does not prevent people from communicating effectively, it can have frustrating consequences. Language is an important part of identity and although it seems like a minor inconvenience compared to say a stroke, it can still greatly affect those who suffer from it.

We will now turn to three contemporary cases, these are: Sarah Colwill from England who sounds like she came from China, there is also the Australian Cindy Hastings who when you hear her have the impression that she is from Eastern Europe, and Kay Russel, who although The Englishwoman sounds like a real Frenchwoman. All three women had certain health problems and did not feel well before there was a change in speech. Today, they share common feelings, and it’s as if they are strangers in the countries where they were born, all frustrated by their condition and lonely.

It was concluded that these changes may be due to brain injuries, which have nothing to do with actual foreign accents but changes in rhythm, pitch and intonation of speech. It can be concluded that it is a speech disorder, which is perceived in the listener's ear as a foreign accent of a certain type, but it has nothing to do with taking on some real foreign accent. This disorder can be caused by physical trauma, but also mental disorders, so modern neurologists believe that the common name for this syndrome is not appropriate.

Scientists believe that this disorder occurs at the time of damage to the area of ​​the brain responsible for the tongue. Despite the small number of cases, it is still a number that can be extracted into a separate category of identical pathology, which has been inappropriately called foreign accent syndrome.