Usually, foreign accent syndrome occurs in a person due to brain damage. This may be the result of stroke, for example. Stroke can cause a variety of speech and language disorders, but foreign accent syndrome is one of the most unusual.
Foreign accent syndrome occurs due to changes in the structure of the brain. It can be caused by cancerous tumors, encephalitis (brain edema), multiple sclerosis, and neurodegenerative diseases (dementia).
Approximately 200 cases of foreign accent syndrome have been described in clinical trials today. This means it’s pretty rare.
Foreign accent syndrome can also be associated with psychological factors. For example, with a lot of stress. There is even a separate type of syndrome – the psychogenic syndrome of a foreign accent. Something similar happened in 2005 with a native Dutch speaker who acquired a strong and persistent French accent due to the stress of being almost hit by a car. Moreover, there were no brain anomalies, but experts discovered psychological problems. As before, this woman began to speak only ten years later.
There is another variant of this condition – mixed foreign accent syndrome. In this case, the person first develops a strong accent due to brain damage and then this person tries to create a new personality with this accent. It is already difficult to completely get rid of this and return to the previous pronunciation: it requires a long intensive training with a speech therapist.
Source: Ferra
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
