A 60-year-old mum from Hillingdon, London, and a 21-year-old sportsman from Jersey have both been diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome after suffering medical incidents. The rare disorder left Georgina Gailey speaking with a Swedish accent, despite neither having ties to those countries.
Medics at the hospital suspected a stroke but two weeks later, she was diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome. The mum-of-two, from Hillingdon, west London, said, “I had a heart attack a few months before. I was already better”.
“I spoke very well and now I say yes (in a Swedish accent) rather than yes (in UK English). People ask me where I’m from and when I tell them they laugh. I smile but inside it makes me sad. I was born and raised in England. I’ve never been to Sweden”, she said.
Georgina continued, “I went to the hospital and they thought I was having a stroke. They kept me there for two weeks and then I was finally diagnosed”.
In another incident, a 21-year-old Jersey sportsman is determined to make a full recovery after a stroke left him speaking with a French accent.
Jack Allan was a mixed martial arts sparring partner at university in the UK when a kick to the jaw caused a bleed on his brain.
It took two weeks for him to be able to speak again and when he did, he had a French accent.
After returning to Jersey, his speech therapist diagnosed him with Foreign Accent Syndrome.
Foreign accent syndrome is a rare disorder in which patients develop speech patterns that are perceived as a foreign accent that is different from their native accent, without having acquired it at the place of origin of the perceived accent.
Foreign accent syndrome is usually the result of a stroke, but can also result from head trauma, migraines or developmental problems. The disorder can result from lesions in the brain’s speech production network or can also be considered a neuropsychiatric disorder. The disorder was first described in 1907 and 62 cases were recorded between 1941 and 2009.
The symptoms result from distorted articulatory planning and coordination processes and although popular news articles often attempt to identify the closest regional accent, speakers with foreign accent syndrome do not acquire a specific foreign accent or additional fluency in a foreign language. There is no proven case of a patient’s foreign language skills improving after a brain injury.
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