Foreign Accent Syndrome

As it happens I still have a valid login over there. After logging in, when I try to access the thread I merely reach the next obstacle:

Same here.

A new article on the case from the Guardian:

Experience: ‘I woke up with a Welsh accent’

My own family didn’t recognise me when I phoned them

I’ve always been conscious of my accent. In 1996, when I was eight, my family relocated from Kent to Stamford, Lincolnshire, and my estuary accent stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone sounded so northern to me and I was teased for my “EastEnders voice”. I also struggled to copy accents. When I was 14, we went to Lanzarote, and I made friends with two girls from Liverpool and Birmingham. My attempts to emulate their accents left my family in hysterics. “You sound ridiculous,” my dad laughed.

one day in June 2023, I woke up and my voice sounded different. I assumed it would pass, but two days later I still sounded strange. My neighbour said to me: “You sound just like my aunt. She’s from south Wales.”

I was worried my children’s school wouldn’t believe they were really speaking to me if they had to call me in an emergency, so I went in and explained in person. My bank has voice recognition as a security feature, and trying to explain my accent was a challenge. The cashier was confused. “Can’t you put your old accent on?” she asked, before concluding, “You’d probably best avoid telephone banking.”

Another case reported by the BBC.

'A stroke left me with an Italian accent'

The grandmother, who is a medically retired customer service advisor, says she has never spoken Italian or even visited Italy, but has now gained a distinct accent.

She claims she even uses words and mannerisms such as "mamma mia", "bambino" and "si" in conversation without realising it.

"Before, I didn't sound like the Queen, but I sounded British. I've always lived in London, but all my family are from Jamaica."

While she knows she is "lucky to be alive" having suffered a stroke, the 58-year-old feels like she has lost her identity due to her condition and has "no control" over the sounds she makes.

"Even my laugh is not the same… I'm not me. I feel like a clown with an upside-down smile that people are watching perform.

"It's very sad – everything is different, even my body language is different. People aren't meeting the original me, I don't know who I am," she says

Another case reported by the BBC.

'A stroke left me with an Italian accent'

This is a fascinating psychical phenomenon, since acquiring a foreign accent can hardly be ascribed to some sort of damage to neural structures due to a stroke for instance. Such damage should instead result in gibberish or simply difficulty or inability to speak. A foreign accent, like a foreign language, can only be acquired by experience in living life in that culture and thereby learning it, clearly implying a former life. I would have to resort for a possible explanation to the area of possible deeply buried reincarnation memories of past lives in other cultures, where perhaps these submerged memories of former personalities having different languages are accidentally uncovered and emerge in consciousness accidentally by the neural disruption of a stroke for instance.

An alternative explanation might be possession of some sort, but that would be contraindicated by the apparent retention by the victim of their normal personality, with the language change merely tacked on.

Foreign Accent Syndrome has no paranormal features as individuals with FAS do not start speaking a new language, but rather develop an accent that sounds like it originates from another language.


People with FAS still speak their original language using the same words and grammatical structures. Their ability to communicate remains unchanged—it’s only the way their speech sounds that is affected. If FAS were a paranormal phenomenon, one might expect individuals to suddenly start speaking fluently in languages they’ve never learned before, which has never been observed in scientific studies of FAS. Insted of "downloading" new knowledge or an accent from an external source, brain injuries cause changes in rhythm, intonation, and pronunciation. It merely resembles an accent from another language, but it’s a physiological change, not new skills.

Foreign Accent Syndrome has no paranormal features as individuals with FAS do not start speaking a new language, but rather develop an accent that sounds like it originates from another language.


People with FAS still speak their original language using the same words and grammatical structures. Their ability to communicate remains unchanged—it’s only the way their speech sounds that is affected. If FAS were a paranormal phenomenon, one might expect individuals to suddenly start speaking fluently in languages they’ve never learned before, which has never been observed in scientific studies of FAS. Insted of "downloading" new knowledge or an accent from an external source, brain injuries cause changes in rhythm, intonation, and pronunciation. It merely resembles an accent from another language, but it’s a physiological change, not new skills.

Since the neural damage caused by stroke or brain injury would presumably have random effects on the particular brain structures responsible for language and accent, this "resemblance" to a specific accent would have to be extremely unlikely - random changes in rhythm, intonation and pronounciation would be much more likely, as I said, to result in gibberish or some unidentifiable speech impediment.