The women who woke up with foreign accents | 60 Minutes Australia

imagine waking up one morning and not sounding like yourself in fact sounding like someone from an entirely different country I've just spent a few fascinating days with three otherwise normal women who have the medical world completely stumped one day I felt sick the next they were jabbering away with thick foreign accents one can now pass for Russian another has developed a French lilt the third sounds Chinese it's called foreign accent syndrome and it's a condition that's as rare as it is strange on the New South Wales Mid North Coast the accents are characteristically Australian but one local sports stands out [Music] Cindy Hastings is fourth-generation Australian she's never been to Europe but you'd swear she was born there such as her thick Eastern European accent where do you think she is from I'd say probably it's interesting that you will perceive it that the way because I'm actually Iranian oh okay I'm born Sydney and Australia all my life oh well Cindy is a victim of the curious condition known as foreign accent syndrome it's rare it's causes vary but all those affected literally wake up one day sounding exotically different but but butter butter battery battery battery charger battery tire Sarah Colville from Plymouth in England is a dead set home here now sounds like she's from Shanghai it wasn't until I was in ambulance on the way to hospital Chantilly say oh you're aware of the way you were speaking and I say oh I sound like a vassal or I said no you sound like you can work at a Chinese restaurant I said yeah look good working to local China house or Safi the robber you saying Armenian and another English woman k Russell sounds like she's just flown in from Paris okay to the locals here in your village accept you as a french person or as an english they have asked on many occasion what my accent is and where i come from and then have expected so they're unsure as well Oh dad it's almost possible these three women share an extraordinary illness that sounds like a joke but has left them frustrated ashamed and lonely imagine one day talking like this and the next having to explain why your mother tongue now sounds French let's just hold on second I started sounding total de France when I heard my spell speed and the speech process in my heads was total difference you'd learn to live with it you learn to adapt but it's not easy and it no it never is it's the same every day for Cindy Hastings life changed profoundly just over a year ago she was running a successful career development agency from her home near Port Macquarie then one day she suffered a series of severe epileptic seizures and was prescribed a new anti convulsion medication but there was a bizarre side effect you started noticing a change change a speech speech slowed down I had trouble word finding so to choose the right words to say but when the doctor said foreign accent syndrome he must have thought what is that it was it was a shock to us to hear something like that first of all yes okay i speakerphone accent so it makes sense but fukken mystic what is fun accent syndrome employment choice is your business Cindy yeah I started it back in 2004 and it was really based on wanting to do something for the community in a local radio interview from three years ago his Cindy's one and only memory of how she used to sound and a life now lost that's very very different is that I could say what I wanted at a speed that didn't sound like I wasn't make sense well you sound like a normal intelligent Australian woman I do it's very distressing to hear that because from what we've been told is that is very unlikely I ever very turned to that invested to me return thank you really nice emotion what's it been like living through all this the impact has been far greater than you might expect for Cindy and her husband David she could no longer run her business and some long-term friendships have suffered you can see just the Wonder in their faces is this the same lady as David got a new girlfriend perhaps or they just try and make their own mind up on the situation to the very thing you are taking the mickey over I often do I think at the beginning but when you when you tell them it's a medical condition that's a result of the wrong medication and in the brain condition they tend to take that serious they'll have some intelligence that the Brazil is working on in there still going is just it just just doesn't connect with this bit this bit seems to have mind over some stuff what's been the worst part of all this I think the worst part was me how it affected me and nobody really understands what it's like to to go from being accepted in your local area you know and all of a sudden everybody wants to treat you like you're deaf or your brain damaged or your foreign I Sophie to see you again there you want to take a seat just here it's two years since Sara Colville joined this rare foreign accent syndrome Club thought to number only 80 around the world let's try some sounds can you say for me pee pee pee pee pee pee pee over and over again as fast as you can pppp pppp Sara was an IT specialist until a severe migraine bordering on a stroke brought the syndrome on and can you try dee-do dee-do dee-do dee-do dee-do dee-do dee-do trash kasia crash karachi crushed car showed up okay let's try reading dr. Nick Miller from England's Newcastle University says his patients don't actually speak with foreign accents it just sounds that way you wish it to know all about am a grandfather the listener hears a foreign accent so because for instance you might add earth to everything I want to poverty please and couple that with changes to the to the rhythm in your speech it might ruin all that sounds Italian to me or you can't pronounce the word or the sound work anymore so instead of water you say water or vice the fart of us on in the glass or something like that and so a or hmm sounds a bit bit German to me you're saying these people have a speech disorder which happens to sound in the year of the listener like a foreign accent yeah I think you've hit the nail on the head have all your friends and family stuck by him friends no family yeah yeah why have you lost friends I think particularly in the early days I didn't like to see what Thai to become because maybe it was too upsetting for them I don't know I they're not around for me to ask you know but so they think you are different just from your voice yeah yeah pretty much I'm a good romantic OLS bitch they will say oh you said this around Sarah's husband Patrick has stuck by her but he can see why people might be put off thinking she's arrogant or rude she used to say to me like you did you do say can you can you make me a cup of coffee please I have to learn to say can you do you coffee so now I look like a rude order yeah all the time the oldest bridge in her little village in Gloucestershire english-born ke Russell sounds like she belongs in Provence and okay foreign accent syndrome was also caused by a migraine but its onset was especially frightening for her and downright weird she recorded herself in those inarticulate first few days we got the idea kay was once a sales rep for a British paint company and made a TV ad using her married name and I would like to welcome you to the premier products insight video highlighting one of our selected products it can be found it's a huge difference isn't it you can't blame people though can you for saying okay you've been watching too many Inspector Clouseau news if only they would sure if you've been through this or go through this you know jolly well there's no way of fighting it it's impossible but sometimes you seem to actually say a word in French you just did impossible I say the words in the way that I can speak it from our brain through the speech process method your intonation tongue movement etc if that sound French to you then that sound French to you I can see that the despair on the face is a lot and this something's happened to me and it's caused me to do this I'm not putting this on it's not something I'm doing to get attention it's something that's happened to me please tell me what what's happened to me why why is this happen there we go I'm good thank you it's I've been in so speak to yours being a new sufferer and the only one in Australia it's good for Cindy to know that she's not on her own I don't know what it's like for you but you you get spoken to like you stupid or you know people play really slow death speech to speak so you have to yeah you have a lot to get used to other people how they treat you so many times if I had the money for every time someone said to me when you're born I'd be millionaire by now it's incredible it's taken more than a year for Cindy to come to terms with her new life a life that seems to be changed forever because doctors tell Cindy her familiar Australian accent and the woman she once was almost certainly won't come back I would love to to still be able to do the things that I loved doing in my professional life you don't think you'll ever get back there so that T is really like losing a part of you if there's a big chunk of me gone yes it's almost an entirely different person isn't it mmm it is but I still the same person is type I still here I just am very different No hello I'm Tara brown thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes Australia make sure you subscribe to our channel you can also download the 9 now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 1,575,397

Rating: 4.6378446 out of 5

Keywords: Foreign accent, medical condition, accent, fascinating, medical mystery, wonder, Russian, French, Chinese, Foreign Accent Syndrome, Liam Bartlett, 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, woke up with different accent, rare medical conditions, people who can speak many languages

Id: uLxhSu3UuU4

Length: 13min 39sec (819 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 13 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/vocalfreesia]

There's a lot of misunderstanding about this. It's not so much a "foreign" accent as an acquired articulation problem.

Accents are distinguished by vowels and some minor consonant changes. Vowels are made by slightly changing the shape and position of your tongue. Equally, some consonants are produced slightly differently (think very English "water," cockney "war-uh" and American "war-da") - the American is not quite a 'd' but it's the closest letter to the actual sound.

When the part of the brain controlling speech movements is damaged, the only way to get those words is to approximate them. So you say your vowel sounds, but your tongue can't quite get the correct shapes. As we listen, it sounds like Chinese, or French etc because that's the closest approximation.

Often is someone has woken from a brain injury with eg a "Chinese" accent, and you have a Chinese / English bilingual person listen, they will absolutely not think it sounds like English with a Chinese accent.

Other production issues from brain injury could be slurring (dysarthria) or stammering (dysfluency). Other speech issues from brain injury could be problems finding the right words, or struggling to construct clear sentneces.

It's really interesting, not enough is known about it and not enough help is available. It can be very isolating for people as their voice is very tied up in their personality.

[u/internalocean]

I hear a lot of white singers on the radio that sound Jamaican when they sing. Is that FAS too?

[u/Kmac0505]

No doot aboot it......

[u/ilikelocomotives]

Tommy Wiseau?

[u/WoestijnGarnaal]

im born and raised in antwerp belgium yet i have a dutch accent (Netherlands).