How weird would it be going from day-to-day speaking your native language with an Italian accent, even though you’ve never set foot in Italy. [1]
As the mangia-cakes over at United-Academics.org report, it can happen.
(Nicolas Cage in ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ – Worst Italian accent ever)
This rare medical condition is known as the Foreign Accent Syndrome. When suffering a brain injury, such as a stroke, the speech center of the brain can get affected. As a result, a speech impediment can occur that may cause a patient to pronounce his or her native language with an accent that to the ear of the listeners may be mistaken as foreign.
(Carlo Rota as Yakavetta [2] in ‘Boondock Saints’ – 2nd worst Italian accent ever)
Watch the video below to hear the speech of a woman suffering from the Foreign Accent Syndrome.
Per la miseria!
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Mariën, P, Verhoeven, J, Wackenier, P, Engelborghs, S, & De Deyn, P (2009). Foreign accent syndrome as a developmental motor speech disorder Cortex, 45 (9), 870-878 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2008.10.010
[1] It wouldn’t have been weird for me since I grew up with everyone around me speaking with Italian accents. If anything, I’d have blended in better!
[2] N.B: The Italian alphabet does not have the letter ‘k’ (or the letters j, w, x or y, for that matter). Maybe that explains the abysmally bad accent.
[…] https://koshersamurai.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/waking-up-with-an-italian-accent/ … . . . […]
renga:
voice, vibrations made
through the direction of thought
undone by damage
unknown disease, direction
changes, creating accents
ears now hear foreign
accent syndrome unrehearsed
spoken on life’s stage
JP/davh
*I had actually heard of this before reading the article presented by the Kosher Samurai. Complex and delicate are our brains.
You’ve done it again, Jules! 🙂
Worked with a patient like this. Very interesting to treat but prognosis is not good. Our brains are very fragile instruments…
What fascinated me was that the people weren’t actually speaking with Italian (or whatever) accents. The disorder causes a speech impediment that only sounds to us like a foreign accent. Amazing. And yes, brains are fragile. Or at least mine certainly is! 😉
Perhaps it is a different phenomenon…I had read once I think where a person woke from a head trauma and actually spoke a foreign language – fluently. Completely lost their native tongue. Now that has got to be very strange indeed.
I tend to say that what ever marbles I have left are far from shiny nor are they smooth.