Medical mystery: Woman starts speaking with foreign accent

[marmar]

Watch: http://gmy.news.yahoo.com/v/10665003

[bluedawg12]

1. Madonna is back in the news?

:rofl:

[marmar]

2. LOL......

Although in Madonna's case, I can see how she adopted a slight British lilt since she lives in London. Hell, I was in London for a week and came back pronouncing my as with the "ah" sound and saying things like "slapper" and "get on well with each other." Cheers!

:)

[bluedawg12]

13. That was spot on.

Ta!

[Javaman]

21. What all this now! nt

[TlalocW]

17. Yes but

Did you ever take the pram out of the boot of the lorry and put it in the lift to go up to your flat to watch telly while eating some Spotted Dick that you got at the sweetshop?

TlalocW

[marmar]

18. No love, but I did spill some bitter on my dicky dirt while eating my chips.....

I went into the loo to clean it up and some bloke told me it was as right as rain. I responded, "What a load of bollocks!"

[SoCalDem]

25. GMTA.. that was my first thought too...

:rofl:

[Dorian Gray]

26. Funniest thing

I read all day! :)

[Warpy]

3. The weirdest one I ever saw was a fellow who had a stroke

and started speaking Portuguese. His family said he didn't speak it and barely understood any of it, although that was his heritage. All we could figure out is that he'd spoken a little when he was a child, perhaps with grandparents, and that was a language file in the brain that had remained undamaged.

Other Portuguese speakers there confirmed he was speaking the language the way a child would, telegraphic speech and limited vocabulary.

[skooooo]

4. Demonic possession!!

Ok, that's how they would have explained 300 years ago.

[Warpy]

6. Either that or a blessing by the holy spirit

followed by his speaking in a recognizable tongue...

[skooooo]

7. Well maybe..

better safe than sorry, I say! Burn that witch!

[RedLetterRev]

23. Chastity Pariah!!!

(I love Edie McClurg! Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is on of my favorite "Saturday afternoon stoner" flicks)

[YOY]

8. or "genetic memory"

Although the thought if it is neigh laughable.

[skooooo]

11. Genetic memory..

..was not a concept in 1708!

[shadowknows69]

9. "We're not talking about possession we're talking about reincarnation"

paraphrased from "Audrey Rose"

[WolverineDG]

20. That happened with my friend's grandmother

Sometimes, she spoke English, other times, she could only speak & understand Spanish. She had been a Spanish teacher decades ago.

dg

[Mojorabbit]

22. This happened to me years ago

It was before they knew of this syndrome and it was an awful time in my life.

[tridim]

5. A guy I used to know did that too..

Pretended he was British. It wasn't until several years later that someone told me he was from Nebraska.

Pathetic and lame.

[Poll_Blind]

10. Ok so my question is- Does the damage cause the brain to CHOOSE a foreign...

....accent or does the damage rawly manifest itself as something which sounds like a foreign accent?

  The reason why I ask is there was a bit of footage with the woman (and I'm sure there were probably other bits- I only watched it once) where she, as part of her German/European accent said "year" when she clearly meant to say "years". A person with an accent from that region would probably say "year" instead of "years", even when describing the plural form but I can't imagine damage to the brain which would manifest itself as something which was a perfect imitation of that accent.

  I think at least in case of the lady who was the focus of the story- the damage caused her brain to choose a known accent. The lady who they showed speaking British English, that might be a different case.

PB

[FedUpWithIt All]

14. I was noticing that too. The language structure issues that a non native

would struggle with "should not" be issue here but i am not a neuro. It IS fascinating tho.

[dipsydoodle]

12. My wife's dysphasia

as a result of a brain tumour in close proximity to the speech centre of the brain became apparent by complete loss of all of the common nouns. However - she was also more or less fluent in Spanish and didn't lose those nouns. I assume that second languages use another part of the brain. So I guess anything is possible

[RedLetterRev]

24. Interesting, because

I have hereditary migraine with aura. The haywire electrical activity commonly causes sufferers to lose speech and reading comprehension. Mine causes me to lose nouns and pronouns specifically. I noticed this and reported it to my neuro who thought it was interesting and asked how I noticed. I was performing a wedding the weekend before my appointment and square in the middle of it, I had a sudden onset. I got to "... and your wedding rings are most special, Trish and" blam! a flashbulb went off behind my eyes and I knew a migraine was minutes away. I was looking at the ceremony and realized I could perceive verbs, adverbs, articles... but no nouns of any kind. The page had spiderwebs in spots where nouns and pronouns were supposed to be. I don't know if I ever would have put two and two together otherwise.

Fortunately, those seizure-y episodes only last for less than half a minute and I could recover, but folks did notice.

I knew where I was, but couldn't name it. I knew the folks in front of me, but couldn't name them. I also knew it wouldn't be long until I was back, so I just smiled sweetly and cleared my throat for a bit. Dreadfully inconvenient.

The migraines and seizure-y episodes are now under control with a very low dose of Topamax and Gabapentin. Seems to work just fine.

I'm fluent in Spanish, still conversant in French and German. I read Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese with ease, though I don't speak them. When I lose nouns, though, I seem to lose them all, except for Mandarin, which I tend to remember as music, if that makes sense.

[dipsydoodle]

27. When it happened

she said she could see the words but not say them. Her brain quickly adjusted to using adverbs so that for example a cup became what you drink from. At a later date, after the first op, when she had recovered the nouns she started switching pronouns so our son became she and out daughter he. That told us the tumour was back..........

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

15. Ha! In 6th grade I sported a light pseudo British accent

Due in part to my love of all things British - the Beatles, Yardley cosmetics, Twiggy, Carnaby Street, etc. I also pretended that I knew and understood French by memorizing snippets of verses from my Singing Nun album (with only the roughest approximation of the sounds and no knowlege of the actual words)

Imagine my horror when one day a REAL little French girl showed up in my class and my classmates pushed me at her and said "Phoebe speaks French!" I gamely tried out my Singing Nun gibberish. The little Parisienne gaped at me and said, in her EXCELLENT English -"That's not French!!!"

In later life I read the EF Benson "Lucia" books. Lucia pretends to speak Italian and then of course is frequently confronted with real Italians. She always brushes off their inability to understand her fake Italian with the explanation that they speak a strange dialect she is unfamilar with.

[peacetalksforall]

16. OK - explain talking in tongues in some evangelical churches - did

a Reverend have a stroke and then he taught his 'language' to the others who passed it down.

Hope it all proves reincarnation.

Big trouble ahead for the evangelicals if there is a sceientific explanation that takes us back beyond 6,000 years. Can you imagine the debates?

I don't know about any of this.

Are there any scientists around who debunk the other scientists.

I'll just file this in my brain and not swallow it all - yet.

I studied Linear B script once out of fascination only, on my own - do you think I could go beyond an accent some day and add something to the world if I suffered a brain injury?

Yep. Filed for future reference ony, not quite believing this. My credibility meter is a little off the scale listening to Reverends communicating to their donaters.

[Window]

19. Is it Sarah Palin?