The man in his fifties, who had never set foot in Ireland, suffered from foreign accent syndrome, an extremely rare disorder caused by a major shock.
This is an extremely rare and puzzling phenomenon. According to a report by experts from Duke University in North Carolina and the Carolina Urologic Research Center in South Carolina published in the British Medical Journala man with prostate cancer developed an “uncontrollable Irish accent” during treatment.
“His accent was uncontrollable, present in all contexts and gradually became persistent,” it read.
This accent is recognizable by its hardening of certain consonants, as well as a very strong pronunciation of the letter “R”, often rolled. A transformation all the more astonishing as the man in his fifties, who had lived in England in his youth, has never set foot in Ireland and has no ancestry in this country. According to scientists, he suffered from this disorder for about twenty months before succumbing to his disease.
Additional Research
In their report, the scientists mention the appearance of the foreign accent syndrome, a disorder in principle caused by a strong shock, a head trauma or a cerebrovascular accident for example, which causes a lesion of areas of the brain involved in the preparation and in the execution of complex motor performances. It has also been identified in patients with psychological disorders and results in a change in diction.
“To our knowledge, this is the first case of the syndrome described in a patient with prostate cancer and the third described in a patient with a malignant tumor”, write the researchers, who insist on the perfect neurological state of the fifties.
According to them, this disorder could have appeared by the proliferation of “multifocal brain metastases” which caused a “paraneoplastic neurological disorder” which attacked the immune system, certain parts of the brain and the nervous system of the patient. The authors of the report have announced that they will continue their research on this subject.
Rare cases
If the cases are infrequent, they are no less spectacular. In an article on the subject, The Guardian take the example of the Briton Sarah Colwill who, after a vascular accident, began to speak with a Chinese accent. Also mentioned is the case of another Briton who, after a similar accident, spoke with a Jamaican accent.
One of the first cases identified is told by Human Sciences, and dates back to the Second World War. Victim of a bombing, a young Norwegian woman, shocked, began to speak with a strong German accent and was taken for a Nazi spy by her entourage.
According to Guardianthis syndrome can be gradually cured by speech therapy sessions or be permanent.