Foreign accent syndrome usually results from a stroke,[1] but can also develop from head trauma,[1] migraines[2] or developmental problems.
[6] More recently, there is mounting evidence that the cerebellum, which controls motor function, may be crucially involved in some cases of foreign accent syndrome, reinforcing the notion that speech pattern alteration is mechanical and thus non-specific.
The listener has to be familiar with a foreign accent in order to attribute it to the affected speech of someone with FAS.
Nick Miller, Professor of Motor Speech Disorders at Newcastle University has explained: "The notion that sufferers speak in a foreign language is something that is in the ear of the listener, rather than the mouth of the speaker.
One problem with Whitaker's criteria is that they are based primarily on subjectivity, and therefore acoustic phonetic measurements are rarely used to diagnose FAS.
[15] In 2010, linguist[16] Jo Verhoeven and neurolinguist[17] Peter Mariën[18][19] identified several subtypes of foreign accent syndrome.
[13] The condition was first described in 1907 by the French neurologist Pierre Marie,[5] and another early case was reported in a Czechoslovak study in 1919, conducted by German internist Alois Pick [de] (1859–1945).
[25] Other well-known cases of the syndrome include one that occurred in Norway in 1941 after a young woman, Astrid L., suffered a head injury from shrapnel during an air-raid.
After apparently recovering from the injury, she was left with what sounded like a strong German accent and was shunned by her fellow Norwegians.
[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] A woman with foreign accent syndrome was featured on both Inside Edition and Discovery Health Channel's Mystery ER[45] in October 2008, and in September 2013 the BBC published an hour-long documentary about Sarah Colwill, a woman from Devon, whose "Chinese" foreign accent syndrome resulted from a severe migraine.
[49][50] Ellen Spencer, a woman from Indiana who has foreign accent syndrome, was interviewed on the American public radio show Snap Judgment.
[51] The British singer George Michael reported briefly speaking in a West Country accent following his recovery from a three-week long coma in 2012.
Two that may provide relief to patients with FAS in the future include mastery of musical skills and "tongue reading".
[4] In terms of mastery of music skills, research by Christiner and Reiterer[non sequitur] suggests that musicians, both instrumental and vocal, are better at imitating foreign accents than non-musicians.
In this way, individuals with FAS might be able to reimitate their original, lost native accents more easily if they master a musical – especially vocal – skill.