On a March morning in 2010, something happened in Sarah Colwill’s life that she still cannot understand – she suddenly began to speak with a Chinese accent. Today he knows that he suffers from the so-called foreign accent syndrome. So far, it is not known what the causes of the disease are. Worldwide, only 60 people have been diagnosed with a mysterious disease.
The symptom of the disease is – as its name suggests – the acquisition of a foreign accent – foreign or occurring in another region of the country. Doctors speculate that the unusual ability is a consequence of damage to the area of the brain responsible for speech. They can occur, for example, as a result of an injury, stroke or, in the case of Sarah Colwill, a migraine attack.
“People automatically assume I’m a stranger … I don’t even know who I am anymore.” I feel trapped in my own body, says the 38-year-old. – Even intensive diction lessons and speech therapy did not help.
Foreign accent syndrome was first diagnosed during the Second World War in a Norwegian woman who was wounded in the head. The woman suddenly began to speak with a German accent (which was ostracized by the community in which she lived).
– The syndrome causes great frustration in patients. They cannot stand why no one can explain to them what happened to them. And we, unfortunately, still do not know the exact cause of the foreign accent syndrome – says prof. Nick Miller, one of the few experts on this mysterious ailment.
(Based on swns.com; Photo Youtube / BBC).
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