As you might already know, severe migraines can put a damper on your daily plans. But as one U.K. woman discovered, they can also change your life forever.
After experiencing a severe migraine, 38-year-old Sarah Colwill was rushed to the hospital. Doctors and medical staff did all they could to keep her comfortable, and eventually, the migraine dissipated. Unfortunately for Colwill, when she awoke the next day, she discovered that her native Plymouth accent was gone and had been replaced with a Chinese accent.
Colwill was later diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome, a rare medical condition that causes patients to develop unfamiliar speech patterns that replace their own accents with different ones. Foreign Accent Syndrome is typically the result of a massive stroke or head trauma, but migraines and developmental problems can also cause it. There were only 62 reported cases of the syndrome worldwide between 1941 and 2009.
Approximately 86 percent of cases are linked to neurological damage in the speech centers of the brain, from strokes, trauma, or other diseases like multiple sclerosis, according to a study published in 2106 in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. These patients usually don’t take on a specific accent — for example, they don’t have a true German accent — but the general changes in their prosody, or speech, can be mistaken for a specific foreigner.
After more than three years of suffering from Foreign Accent Syndrome, Colwill simply longs to hear her British accent once again.
It’s got to be a nightmare to know and understand that this is not how you speak, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
H/T Viral Nova