An Arizona woman, Michelle Myers recently claimed that she had been going to bed with severe headaches lately and recently, she woke up speaking what sounded like a foreign accent. At various points, Australian and Irish accents have inexplicably flowed from her mouth for about two weeks, then disappeared. And one particular person seems to come to mind when she speaks. "Everybody only sees or hears Mary Poppins," Myers said.
Myers said she has been diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome. The disorder typically occurs after strokes or traumatic brain injuries damage the language centre of a person's brain - to the degree that their native language sounds like it is tinged with a foreign accent, according to the Center for Communication Disorders at the University of Texas at Dallas. Affected people may also cut out articles such as "the" and drop letters, turning an American "yeah' into a Scandinavian "yah," for instance.
The injury caused her brain to truncate pronunciations for "this" and "that," resulting in foreign-sounding "dis" and "dat." The condition was first documented in 1907 when French neurologist Pierre Marie surveyed a Parisian man who had suffered a stroke and suddenly spoke with an Alsatian accent, though he was not from the Germany-France border region where the language is spoken. How bizarre is that, right? Myers told a leading daily, "Really difficult to begin with ... people would think it was a joke, saying things like, 'You sound like a Spice Girl.' It was hard because I was really struggling. I have come to terms with the fact I might sound like this forever. I realize it's part of me now." "Some people think it's physiological; others think it's psychological," she told the station. "People like me - we don't care which one it is. We just really want to be taken seriously and if it is something that's going to hurt me, help me," she continued.
