[duncey]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 78,00.html

Originally Posted by pr0n

Geordie stroke victim left sounding like Jamaican
By Russell Jenkins
RESEARCHERS are hoping that a woman who woke up after a stroke to find her Geordie accent sounding like Jamaican patois could shed some light on “foreign accent syndrome”.

Lynda Walker, 60, shows the symptoms of a rare affliction that leaves sufferers with a different accent. Although Ms Walker lived in Canada for a spell, she returned to the North East, where she grew up, and never lost her strong Geordie twang. But when she regained consciousness after a stroke in March last year, she spoke with a different accent.

Most people believe that she sounds Jamaican. Ms Walker said: “I got very down about it at first. It was so strange because you do not feel like the same person. I didn’t realise what I sounded like but then my speech therapist played a tape of me talking. I was just devastated.”

Researchers at Newcastle University are using Ms Walker as a case study for the syndrome. There have been only 50 documented cases over the past 65 years. The syndrome was identified in 1941 after a Norwegian woman, who suffered a shrapnel injury to her brain, began speaking with a strong German accent. It led to her being ostracised.

Research suggests that a tiny part of the brain that affects speech has been damaged. It can result in altered pitch, lengthened syllables or mispronunciation, changing the speaker’s accent. “It is like losing a big part of your identity,” Ms Walker said. “Everyone asks where I am from and if I say Westerhope, in Newcastle, they just laugh. They think I am lying. The worst thing is not having control over your own accent. I want my voice back but I don’t think that will ever happen.”[/quote

[ninty]

I saw a show on that. some lady from the southern us woke up one day sounded like like she was english, but she had never been there.

[Airborne Butters]

She must have been a WoW Troll happy:

[Arch]

That would be awesome oOo: YA MON!

[CoMaToSe]

when people are possessed, they sometimes speak in long dead tongues

[mr.miyagi]

was in the local news here, doesn't live too far from me, heard her on the news and she sounds NOTHING like Jamaican, jus slurred a little coz of her stroke, shame coz I was lookin forward to hearing her.... calmdown:

[Judas]

lol