In the vast expanse of medical sciences, there are some diseases which make their mark by their peculiarity. For example, imagine a person who has survived from stroke and then started speaking in an entirely different accent. How crazy is that? Well, it has a name - Foreign Accent Syndrome.
Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) is a rare psychiatric disorder caused due to severe trauma in Broca's region of the brain. However, some other causes were also noted and as in the case of multiple sclerosis, it has been idiopathic in few cases too.
Signs and symptoms -
Person with this syndrome suddenly starts speaking in a completely different accent of language with no cognitive disabilities noted.
FAS has been documented in cases around the world, including accent changes from Japanese to Korean, British English to French, American-English to British English, and Spanish to Hungarian.
Some common speech changes associated with FAS include:
Fairly predictable errors
Unusual prosody, including equal and excess stress (especially in multi-syllabic words)
Consonant substitution, deletion, or distortion
Voicing errors (i.e. bike for pike)
Trouble with consonant clusters
Vowel distortions, prolongations, substitutions (i.e. “yeah” pronounced as “yah”)
“uh” inserted into words.
When was the first case reported?
The first case of FAS was reported in 1907 and only about 80 odd cases noted around the globe every year.
Treatment includes -
Speech therapy—You may be taught how to better move your lips and jaw during speech.
Counselling —Since FAS is a rare disorder, you may feel isolated and embarrassed. Counselling can help you and your family better cope with the condition.
Hello! This was Ajay Reddy writing for Dialectic Doctors.
REFERENCES -
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