Woman 'wakes up' with foreign accent

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."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/3911551/Woman-wakes-up-with-foreign-accent