Woman gets Jamaican accent after a stroke

Geordie gets Jamaican accent

A Geordie woman woke up in hospital after suffering from a stroke - with a West Indies accent. Linda Walker of Westerhope, Newcastle, suffered from the minor stroke at her home and was transferred to the local hospital. She was shocked when she spoke to family from her hospital bed that she sounded like she was from Jamaica.

Doctors diagnosed foreign accent syndrome, where a stroke or knock on the head affects the brain's voice control centre. After intensive speech therapy doctors think Linda may keep her Jamaican accent for ever.

According to The Sun Linda said: "I just don't sound like me. Not only did I have a stroke but I got lumbered with this accent too. I don't feel the same person.

"Everybody asks where I'm from and, if I say Newcastle, they just laugh. They think I'm lying. A neighbour asked if I was drunk as my speech is slower and often slurred. I just want my own voice back."

Linda is assisting Newcastle University experts who are researching the rare condition.

Dr Nick Miller, senior lecturer in speech language sciences, said: "Foreign accent syndrome has a lot to do with control of the lips, tongue, vocal cords and breathing, which are all affected by neurological damage. As a result a person's speech becomes severely distorted."

Foreign accent syndrome was first discovered in Norway in 1941 when a young woman spoke with a German accent after an air raid.
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Friday, 4 October, 2002, 16:02 GMT 17:02 UK
'Foreign accent syndrome' explained

Some patients who suffer brain injuries occasionally lose the ability to talk in their native accent - but now scientists may know why.
The condition, called "foreign accent syndrome", affects only a tiny number of patients.

It can mean that a native English speaker can end up sounding more like Spanish or French.

It can follow a stroke - or another kind of head injury, and while the problem often clears up on its own, it can be another highly upsetting blow for patients often struggling with other disabilities.

To add insult to injury, some doctors dismissed the problem as more likely to be psychiatric in origin than physical.

Now researchers at Oxford University have found that patients with "foreign accent syndrome" seem to share certain characteristics which might explain the problem.

A small number of them all had tiny areas of damage in various parts of the brain.

This might explain the combination of subtle changes to vocal features such as lengthening of syllables, altered pitch or mispronounced sounds which make a patient's pronunciation sound similar to a foreign accent.

Trauma

Dr Jennfier Gurd, who led the research with phonetician Dr John Coleman, said: "The way we speak is an important part of our personality and influences the way people interact with us.

"It is understandably quite traumatic for patients to find that their accent has changed.

"Patients derive some comfort from knowing more about the causes of their rare condition and many are happy to help scientists to understand better the nature of the brain and its role in human accents."

Dr Coleman told BBC News Online: "There is a good likelihood in time you are going to improve and become more like you used to be."