Woman 'wakes up' with foreign accent

BY DEBBIE JAMIESON

Bronwyn Fox knows where she is from but has no idea where her accent originated.

The Invercargill woman believes she has foreign accent syndrome – a rare condition believed to be caused by damage to the part of the brain that controls speech.

Fewer than 100 people in the world have been officially documented as suffering from the syndrome, which leaves them speaking with an alien accent.

In the case of Mrs Fox, it is a mixture of Welsh, Scottish and North London accents.

"People say `where do you come from?' And I say 'Winton' and they say `no, no but where are you from originally?'," she said yesterday in her thick accent.

"It's very hard for people to realise it's come from my head."

Mrs Fox has suffered from multiple sclerosis for the past 25 years but always spoke with a Kiwi accent until about two years ago when she woke up one day and could not see.

A subsequent MRI showed two lesions on the back of her brain.

At the same time, her family noticed her speech began to change until it became standard for her to speak in her new accent.

"My sister who lives in Hamilton, I rang her and I was talking to her on the phone and she didn't know it was me, and when my best friend rang from Christchurch she hung up."

Her daughter later heard a news story about an English woman who began speaking with a Chinese accent after suffering a series of migraines.

Other known cases of the disorder include an English woman speaking with a French accent after having a stroke, and a Norwegian woman who began speaking with a German accent after being hit by shrapnel in 1941. She was later shunned by her fellow Norwegians.

A lot of people thought she was having them on, Mrs Fox said.

"But I'm not that good an actor."

She was a third-generation New Zealand and had never visited the United Kingdom. "My mother never had an accent nor my father nor anybody, so it's just me."

Her GP and specialist believed the change in her speech was related to the lesions but had not been able to offer much further help.

"It doesn't worry me. Maybe if I spoke with a Japanese accent I would do something about it.

"You've got to have a sense of humour...there could be a lot worse things with MS."

Husband Rex said he was also unconcerned.

"It's quite entertaining. It brightens up a boring day sometimes," he said.

Mrs Fox had wondered whether singing might help her accent.

"I sit in my car and and I sing to see if I can get my old voice back again. But no."

In other documented cases of the syndrome some people had had their original accent return.

"After two years I don't think it will happen," she said.

- © Fairfax NZ News