A woman who went mute for months after a mysterious brain injury started speaking in four different accents when she got her voice back.
According to a report published in Ladbible, 31-year-old Emily had gone mute for a period of two months after the injury. On getting her voice back she now speaks in four different accents including Polish, Italian, Russian and French.
Her condition is medically identified as foreign accent syndrome. This is a rare speech disorder that is caused by brain damage.
Speaking to Ladible, Emily said, “This whole experience has been exhausting and totally overwhelming. It’s not just my accent that has changed – I don’t speak or think in the same way as before this and I can’t construct sentences like I used to”.
Emily went to add that her dad is finding it difficult to deal with the situation. He had never imagined Emily wording things as she does now.
Emily’s suffered from headaches before her speech deepened while she was working at a children’s home. A few weeks later, her speech became slow and slurred, key indicators of a stroke.
She then went for a holiday with her partner to Thailand. Just five days into her trip, she slowly began to speak again. In a few days, her voice grew stronger but with an Eastern European accent.
“On holiday, I started making sounds like a deaf person trying to talk – it is thought that the neuropathways had started to open as my body had completely relaxed. By the time I was home, the words were sounding like a foreign language,” said Emily.