Foreign Accent Syndrome

[GeneChing]

I can fake a few accents, British, Scot, Jamaican, but I've never been able to do a Chinese one. Go figure.

Migraine attack gives English woman a Chinese accent (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1267208/Sarah-Colwills-Chinese-accent-brought-migraine-attack.html)
By Luke Salkeld
Last updated at 11:59 AM on 20th April 2010

As anyone who suffers migraines knows, the pain can leave you speechless.

But Sarah Colwill has experienced a much more unusual vocal effect - she now speaks with a Chinese accent.

The disturbing impact of a chronic migraine has left her voice unrecognisable to family and friends.

Doctors say she has Foreign Accent Syndrome, a condition which damages the part of the brain that controls speech and word formation.

It is so rare, there are only 60 recorded cases in the world.

Mrs Colwill, 35, is baffled by the effects and fears she may never regain her normal pronunciation and tone of voice.

She said the change happened after she had such an extreme headache last month that she called for an ambulance.

Paramedics said her voice sounded strange and when she arrived at hospital she realised she was speaking like a Chinese woman.

The IT project manager, who was born in Germany but has lived in Plymouth since she was a child, is having speech therapy to try to revert to her Devon accent.

Mrs Colwill said she had no idea why she had picked up the Far Eastern speech pattern. 'I have never been to China. I just want my own voice back but I don't know if I ever will. I moved to Plymouth when I was 18 months old so I've always spoken like a local.

'But following one attack an ambulance crew said I sounded Chinese. I spoke to my step-daughter on the phone from hospital and she didn't recognise who I was. She said I sounded Chinese.

'Since then I have had my friends hanging up on me because they think I'm a hoax caller.

'I speak in a much higher tone now, my voice is all squeaky. To think I am stuck with this accent is getting me down.'
Speaking In Tongues.jpg

Mrs Colwill has suffered severe headaches for a decade but this year was diagnosed as having rare sporadic hemiplegic migraines.

The condition causes blood vessels in the brain to expand, resulting in stroke-like symptoms such as paralysis on one side of the body.

The effects normally last for around seven days but Mrs Colwill had several migraine attacks at once, culminating with an excruciating attack on March 20 which caused the brain damage.

She has been contacted by Professor John Coleman, a phonetics expert at Oxford University.

He said Foreign Accent Syndrome is thought to be caused by strokes and brain injuries but the condition is so rare there is limited research into why it happens.

[YouKnowWho]

My wife has the southern accent (North Carolina, Louisiana) and she hates it very much. She loves my Chinglish accent and she thinks it's cute.

[David Jamieson]

my wife hates it when i do a gay chinese retarded navy officer accent.

that's the one that really gets her mad.

[kfson]

I can do north and west Texas. I can not do east Texas.
Sometimes I can't understand east Texas.

I can do Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota all day long.

Oh, I can also do Mid Sweden but not south Sweden.

[GeneChing]

DJ, you do a gay chinese retarded navy officer accent? Got vid?

[YouKnowWho]

my wife hates it when i do a gay chinese retarded navy officer accent.

that's the one that really gets her mad.

I was a navy officer (2nd lieutenant), I am retarted, I'm also Chinese, ... never mind ... I'm not gay.

[Lucas]

hahaha, that gave me a good laugh.

[David Jamieson]

DJ, you do a gay chinese retarded navy officer accent? Got vid?

well, retarded gay chinese accent, but with a sailor hat on. Standing at attention. You don't want the vid. :p

[uki]

i know when i go travelling, i always seem to take on the local dialect accent of whatever country i am in...

[Lucas]

i spent several months in trinidad years ago, apparently i did pick up a bit of an accent because when i came back to the states my friends mentioned it. i however didnt notice it because nearly everyone had such a thick west indian accent. i think it went away fairly quickly though once i was back.

[solo1]

how can you hate a southern accent?

[solo1]

well, retarded gay chinese accent, but with a sailor hat on. Standing at attention. You don't want the vid. :p



nice image. now its in my head, thanks.

[Lucas]

how can you hate a southern accent?

ya idk i think women with southern accents are pretty sexy.

[David Jamieson]

I think the Kentucky accent is nice to hear as far as NA accents go.

I also like high american (think Kelsey Grammar from Fraser).
It has an almost english sound to it. Very sophisticated.

[Lucas]

im partial to the ebonics accent. it gets me hot.

[GeneChing]

If you can hardly speak English, welcome to WAFANGDIAN English School!!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX708n-i-2U)

[David Jamieson]

im partial to the ebonics accent. it gets me hot.

everytime I hear ebonics, I just change the radio station. :p

[GeneChing]

More on Ms. Colwill. There's a vid, but unfortunately "this media is not available in your territory." But I'll post it nonetheless because perhaps a forum member across the pond can access it.


Plymouth woman 'woke up sounding Chinese' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23953314)

Cannot play media. Sorry, this media is not available in your territory.
3 September 2013 Last updated at 17:55 ET Help

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/69632000/jpg/_69632691_69632690.jpg
A woman from Plymouth who developed a Chinese-sounding accent after being rushed to hospital with a migraine says she has accepted that her local accent may never return.

Sarah Colwill features in a BBC documentary in which she learns to live with what is known as foreign accent syndrome.

Philippa Mina reports.

The Woman Who Woke Up Chinese is available on the iPlayer

[Brule]

Hey, I've seen this exact phenomenon to recent black sashes of the TCMA variety. Go figure.

[Jimbo]

I can fake a few accents, British, Scot, Jamaican, but I've never been able to do a Chinese one. Go figure.

I can fake a British accent (Received Pronunciation), which I actually studied in an accent course for actors. I thought it would be a good addition to the 'special skills' section on my resume. Just last week at an audition, at the end of it, one of the casting directors for a short film asked me to improvise a scene by myself using the accent. Well, I found out that, while I could do it if I had time to practice with a script, I absolutely could not use it in an improv. In fact, I SUCKED at it. It was obvious they were not impressed, either, and after an eternity of about 15 cringe-worthy seconds, the main casting guy mercifully ended it. The next day, I deleted 'British accent' from my resume!:o

And oddly enough, I cannot do a Japanese or Chinese accent, either. Which is unfortunate, because that would really help me on my resume if I could.

[GeneChing]

This isn't quite the same, but related.

Poison victim now better at English (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/national/Poison-victim-now-better-at-English/shdaily.shtml)
By Ke Jiayun | September 29, 2013, Sunday

A BILINGUAL Chinese office worker who suffered carbon monoxide poisoning can now only speak English fluently.

Chen Jia, a 28-year-old graduate from Jianghan University in Hubei Province, was overcome by carbon monoxide fumes from an indoor barbecue at a friend’s birthday party in Wuhan City last year.

She had returned to Wuhan last February, after a two-year stint as a representative with Insearch College at the University of Technology in Sydney.

Exposure to the toxic environment greatly impaired Chen’s ability in her native Chinese, although her English skills remained, Changjiang Daily reported.

Chen was unable to walk until March this year and she has been receiving rehabilitation training in language ability at the General Hospital of the Yangtze River Shipping since August.

As part of her rehabilitation work, doctors asked Chen to teach English to medical staff in the hospital.

“Similar cases have been reported before,” Deng Hongwei, a doctor with the rehabilitation department, said.

“When bilingual patients suffer brain damage, they can lose the ability to speak one language but speak the other language very well,” said Deng.

Deng added that Chen’s rehabilitative training in teaching English could help her regain her confidence and recover sooner.

An intern of the hospital said Chen’s English class is as good as those given by her university teachers.

Chen’s family is hoping to get social support to pay for her rehabilitation costs of more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,634) a month.

[GeneChing]

...I can understand someone suffering brain trauma waking up with an accent that resembles another language, but waking up fluent in another language is a whole other scenario.

Plus this story is just wacky...:confused:


Aussie man who woke from coma speaking Chinese finds TV match (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/02/13/asia-pacific/aussie-man-who-woke-from-coma-speaking-chinese-finds-tv-match/#.VsHyO_krKUl)
AFP-JIJI
FEB 13, 2016

SYDNEY – An Australian man who woke from a coma speaking fluent Mandarin has found love on a Chinese dating show.

Ben McMahon was involved in a serious car accident in 2013 that left him in a coma for more than a week.

When he awoke, to the astonishment of his family, the Melbourne man started speaking in Mandarin.

Broadcaster SBS reported that McMahon had matched with a woman on the dating show “If You Are The One” after two episodes of the Chinese-language show featured contestants from Australia.

The program sees male contestants attempt to win the hearts of 24 women, and the often frank assessments offered between the sexes have won the English-subtitled show popularity.

“I thought I’d put myself out there and find out if I was the one,” McMahon told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Friday.

“It’s a good insight into Chinese culture and just some of the crazy things that go on and the requirements for relationships,” he said of the show which attracts up to 50 million viewers.

McMahon, one of 10 men and 16 women to travel from Australia to China to film the program, learnt some Mandarin in high school and later traveled in China and studied in Beijing.

But he could not have anticipated that he would briefly lose the ability to speak English after his accident and that his internal monologue would be in Chinese.

“When I came out of that coma, the first words to come out of my mouth were in fluent Mandarin,” he told the ABC.

He said the first person he saw was a nurse of Asian appearance and so he had said to her in Mandarin: “Hi, it really hurts here … what happened to me?”

At that time, his thoughts and dreams were also in Mandarin, while his conversation left his parents wondering whether they needed to learn the Asian language.

McMahon met Sydney-based lawyer Feng Guo on the show, which is yet to air in Australia, and the pair have so far had only one date.

They will travel to the Maldives on holiday together next week for the free trip they won on the show.

McMahon said he wanted to use his language skills to forge better cultural communication between China, Australia and the rest of the world.

“In Chinese there is an idiom that goes along the line of, ‘from a tragedy comes something great,’ ” he said.

[GeneChing]

This makes a lot more sense now.


Australian dude woke up from coma speaking fluent Mandarin, snatched up Chinese girlfriend on reality show (http://shanghaiist.com/2016/02/19/australian_dude_wakes_from_coma_speaking_mandarin. php)

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/ben_mcmahon_gf_5.jpg

After purportedly waking from a coma miraculously fluent in Mandarin, Australian dude Ben McMahon's life has been on the upswing, his magical language skills even nabbing him a Chinese girlfriend in time for this Valentine's.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/ben_mcmahon_gf_2.jpg

McMahon, 24, hailing from Melbourne, fell into a coma back in 2012 following a serious car crash -- and then reportedly awoke a week or so later as a fluent Mandarin-speaker, reports ABC News.
Although he had previously studied Chinese in high school, McMahon claimed his skills prior to the coma were basic at best. Yet, supposedly, after gaining consciousness he began instinctively speaking to his nurse in Mandarin ("Hi, it really hurts here ... what happened to me?") -- even temporarily forgetting how to speak English.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P5wa-Mx0l8

Since acquiring his implausible talent overnight, McMahon has made the most of it over the last few years, co-hosting a Chinese TV show and leading tours in Melbourne for Mandarin speakers. And recently, his divine gift has led him to love via reality TV.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/ben_mcmahon_gf_3.jpg

"In Chinese there is an idiom that goes along the line of 'from a tragedy comes something great,'" McMahon commented sagely.
Late last year he nabbed a spot on Chinese dating show "If You Are The One," travelling to the Jiangsu capital of Nanjing with nine other Australian Romeos.
"I thought I'd put myself out there and find out if I was the one," he summed up.
Apparently so -- McMahon's appearance united him with Sydney-hailing Chinese lawyer Feng Guo, with whom he now shares a long-distance relationship.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/ben_mcmahon_gf_4.jpg

The miracle of love -- or something.
By Pinky Latt
[Images via Facebook // Video via YouTube]
Contact the author of this article or email tips@shanghaiist.com with further questions, comments or tips.
By Shanghaiist in News on Feb 19, 2016 3:00 PM