This story, although bizarre, doesn’t belong in the tabloids; it’s real. Believe me. When Karen Butler, of Newport, Oregon had oral surgery about a year and a half ago, nothing much changed, other than the fact that she looked a bit like a chipmunk from the swelling, and that she had acquired a thick new British accent.
Over the next few months her strange new accent softened somewhat, but never returned to normal. Eventually doctors determined that Butler was suffering from “foreign accent syndrome”, a rare neurological disease that has only been documented about 60 times since the 1900’s. Very peculiar.
Usually, foreign accent syndrome is caused by stroke, head injuries, multiple sclerosis or migraines. The resultant accent isn’t pure as it tends to flux, depending on how people pronounce certain sounds.
Dr. Ted Lowenkopf, medical director of the Providence Stroke Center said:
What happens with foreign accent syndrome to the best of our understanding is that a very, very small part of the speech area is affected so that the normal intonation of speech gets altered.
The strangest thing about Butler’s accent transplant is that she can’t even hear that it’s changed, unless her voice is recorded and played back to her.
[Source: KATU News]
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