The Curious Condition of Foreign Accent Syndrome

Imagine one day you woke up and started speaking in a foreign accent for no reason. For example, you suddenly found that your British accent sounded American, or your Spanish accent sounded a little bit Hungarian, or perhaps your Japanese now sounded like it was being spoken by a Korean. This strange condition is known as foreign accent syndrome.

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a rare speech disorder that was first described in 1907 by a French neurologist named Pierre Marie. Since then, there have been just over 100 cases reported around the world. FAS does not give sufferers the ability to speak a foreign language – their native language remains the same – and it is not the same as developing the accent of the people in a country that you have lived in for some time. What makes FAS so strange is that it happens quite suddenly and sufferers can acquire an accent of a country they have never been to, even if they have never even met a person from that country! So what is the cause of foreign accent syndrome?

It is thought that people with FAS experience changes in their nervous system due to neurological damage caused by surgery, head trauma or mental health conditions. The resulting changes in speech tend to remain consistent as opposed to the sufferer switching from one accent to another. A 2019 report on 49 people with FAS found that most reported having a foreign accent for 2 months to 18 years, with a mean length of 3 years.

Foreign accent syndrome is different to when a person spends a lot of time around people with a foreign accent and gradually start to develop that accent. FAS happens quite suddenly and the sufferer can sound like they are speaking their native language as a second or even third language.

One of the earliest recorded cases of FAS involved a Norwegian woman who was hit by shrapnel during World War II and began speaking with a German accent. A case recorded in 2016 details the story of a 34-year-old African American woman that was diagnosed with schizophrenia who began speaking with a British accent despite never having been to Britain. And in a 2018 case report, a 65-year-old Spanish-speaking woman with multiple sclerosis (MS) began speaking in Spanish with an English accent.

A 2019 study that looked at 112 FAS cases found that the majority were adult, right-handed women who were native English speakers. The most common contributing conditions were severe headaches, stroke, surgery in the face or mouth, and severe head trauma.

Rare syndrome makes Texas mom speak with foreign accent
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KLPfdKPu8E