The world’s funniest disease

Foreign accent syndrome causes you to wake up as a whole new you

A MAN WOKE up from a coma last week. Tom Paterson had spent his whole life in a UK town called Largs and had a rural English accent. After six weeks in hospital, he woke up.

“Are you feeling better?” the nurse asked him.

“Ya!” he said in a strange, East European accent. “I vanting drink.”

After he left hospital, everyone he spoke to asked: “Where are you from?”

He said: “All my life I’ve been Tom from Largs and now people think I’m Tomasz from Poland.”
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Yes, he had Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS), almost definitely the world’s funniest disease.

Comedians pray nightly to catch this ailment, and some of us even hit ourselves over the head at regular intervals in a desperate bid to get an advantage. No luck, yet for me.

FAS was first identified by a doctor in 1907. But the number of cases appears to be accelerating. (I am not making any of this up.)
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I once listened to a tape of a victim named George Reynolds, who came from Essex, near London, but woke up with an Italan accent.

A BBC interviewer asked him: “When you grew up you spoke in an ordinary Essex voice?”

George replied: “Oh, I was as Essex as they come, like-a-da cockney.” I’m telling you, it sounded so Italian, you could smell oregano.
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I’ve also heard tapes of Cindy Lou Romberg of Washington. In 2008, she had a normal American accent until her chiropractor performed a neck adjustment. Click! Suddenly she had a Russian accent and even made the grammatical errors Russians make when speaking English.

Imagine spending your whole life saying things like: “Yo, dude, wanna cawfee?”

Then one day you open your mouth and out comes: ““Don’t thanking me, nyet, nyet, I wish give you gift from Moskva, please to haff my shoes.”

Cindy then drifted into something more European (you can hear her and other victims on the video clip at the bottom of this column).
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The sad thing is that few people take FAS sufferers seriously. Friends and family members first think it is a joke. When the days turn to weeks and months, they get really annoyed.

But whatever you do, don’t hit the sufferer on the head. She may come out with an even weirder accent. One British FAS sufferer named Linda Walker ended up with a shifting accent that drifted into Jamaican. “Hey mon, why you hit me upside da head?”
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But it’s a real disease. Doctors say that FAS is caused by a disturbance in the speech centre of the brain, and cannot be faked.

Really?

Suspicious, I tried to fake it.

In a coffee shop, I hit myself on the head and spoke with a Singaporean accent for as long as I could.

“This coffee damn good, muffin also very good one-leh. Make on premises izzit? Wa, you stylo-milo one today, dress so smut. Damn nice-la. Why you look at me lidat?”

After three minutes, I gave up, exhausted. Also, the coffee shop people called security.

It was odd: during those few minutes, I did feel an uncontrollable urge to start suing international magazines.
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Yes, FAS is funny, but it can also be dangerous. A Norwegian woman named Astrid L. was hit on the head in 1941 and from then on could only speak with a German accent: not very helpful in the middle of World War II.

Can you imagine the danger?

“Guten morgen, herr British soldier, do not me shoot. Ich bin not ein Deutschlander, honest.”

Bang!
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Comments

[Karuna]

Talking about accents.
An Indian friend in Sydney, went to a local bank to apply for a home mortgage.
The bank officer was a white skin local Aussie looking man.
As they were speaking, my friend picked a familiar accent.
He asks this bank officer, "Did you study in Doveton in Chennai ?"
The bank officer looked very surprised, "Yes..how did you know ?"

Doveton is a school in Chennai for Anglo-Indians. Anglo-Indians have this different English accent.

[Angela]

Nury, your fake singlish may have caused them to call security. It is annoying to us who are native singlish speakers. Next time you're here I will take you to our neighborhood hawker centre and give you a live demo how to master singlish in five minutes.

There is another way you can get FAS. Singaporean students who speak perfect singlish all their lives came back from 2 years study in Melbourn speaking very angmoh english leh..how?

Worst still this ex-colleague hor, she go holiday new york one week come back she talk laik dat angmoh woman carrie sex in da city character, also dress like her...how ha?

[Nury]

Thanks Angela, actually Singaporean is one of my favorite accents, please give me lessons...!

[Inspector Singh]

I tink i gotta italiano disease! I cannota stopa talking like-a-dis. watt am going to do! mamma mia

[Silvio Berlusconi]

You are being most lucky, bhai. I woke up this morning with an Indian accent, no less. What I am going to do? This is being most inconvenient, what with me being the prime minister of Italy. Aiyoo. And where's the punkah wallah with my lunch? You can't be getting good staffs these days. where's my jelabi?

[Penny]

Hahahaha... Uncle Nury, you've actually mixed Singlish and Manglish there. There aren't that much of differences since Singapore and Malaysia is just one bridge away, but "lah..." is Malaysian. However, "laik dat" and "leh" are definately Singaporeans!

[Celina]

Hi, my name is Celina and I'm from Hong Kong. I have a dream; to be a successful and published writer. My question for you is: what kind of things would I need to prepare before I can see my book in a bookshelf in Page One?

[Nury]

Hi, Celina, that's an easy question to answer.
To be a published book writer, you have to write a book.
That's all you have to do. It needs to be a good book, since publishers have a lot of choice, and there's a great deal of competition.

There's just one other hint I can give you.
I have never met a successful writer who is not also a keen reader. So you need to be an enthusiastic reader to start with.
Hope that's helpful.

[TS]

One more reason to avoid the quacks that claim they can cure diseases by adjusting your spine....

[Chamin]

Angela,

I recently met a Singaporean friend studying in the US and has managed to get an American accent in about two years. We were attending a conference in the US.

One afternoon, we came across a group of students from Singapore. After about 20 minutes, my friend left saying "I better leave before I pick up Singlish again" :-p

[TS]

A Chinese man walks into a bank in Perth to change some Yuan into Australian dollars.
He gets less money than he expected and asks the teller:"Last time I change money here, you give more dollar for the same number of Yuan, why less now?".

The teller just answers: "Fluctuations".

The Chinese man starts to look very upset, grasps his money and red faced stomps towards the exit.
In the door he turns around and shouts at the top of his voice into the bank: "FLUCK YOU AUSTRALIANS TOO!"

[sej]

Angela,

Feel free to sign me up for one of your Singlish lessons too!!

But Nury,

This FAS... can you slip in and out of FAS on a, errr.... daily or perhaps hourly basis? When I arrive at work, I often begin the day with an Irish accent. Progressing within an hour onto Scottish. And it's not something I seem to be able to control... it's just something I feel compelled I have to do... well, until someone throws something very solid at me and I forget to duck.

[fardel]

Now it is clear what ONS means

Learn singlish in one night

Now I understand why every body wants to learn it from Angela

Learn singlis

[zombiehellmonkey]

Coming from the UK, I've always believed that the London estuary accent is a result of several rounds in the pub. I'll even bet some fish balls and a packet of dried shrimp that any foreigner can pick it up after a few pints and some pork scratchings.

[sej]

I just watched the video... Sad really...

I think accents simply come about because we get used to shaping our mouths and throats in a particular fashion. Then when we try and speak a language we're not used to, we can't make the right mouth or throat shapes, resulting in the accent.

In these cases in the video, the accent is obviously coming about because of some serious brain damage, and they are in fact extraordinarily lucky to not have had more profound damage.

On a related note, stories abound of, for example, how someone had a stroke, lost their ability to speak and re-learn English, but then had no difficulty, out of the norm, to learn Chinese. Supposedly, English is a left-brain language and Chinese is a right-brain language, so if the left-brain is damaged, the right-brain in theory can take over, with the obvious consequences. Presumably, the reverse would apply should a Chinese suffer the equivalent stroke, perhaps they could lose the ability to speak Chinese, but have no difficulty in learning English.

I'm not sure if it's true or not, I couldn't find a reliable reference to the story, but this story would kind of suggest it might just be: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2009/10/091020_witn_stroke_language.shtml

[Paul]

I had an interesting experience a few years back in which some tourists from the US stopped me to ask for some directions to some place in Hong Kong. After informing them of a proper route, they asked me where I was from. When I said I was from Florida they said I did not sound like I was from the US at all...

A friend back in the states also commented that I was speaking with a strange accent while on a short stateside visit. I myself am not able to directly hear what about my 'accent' is different, or what aspect of Hong Kong has rubbed off on me...but it usually takes about a day back in the US for it to wear off (at least according to my friends there.)

I have also noticed that I have quite a few dreams in Cantonese now...and I find myself at times struggling to recall an English word for something that I should know. If there is a bridge between my left brain and right brain...it is definitely clogged like the cross harbor tunnel at rush hour.

[zombiehellmonkey]

I don't believe in this syndrome, but there's a perfectly simple explanation for these symptoms - demon possession.

[Lurker]

@zombiehellmonkey - according to Occam razor, the simplest explanation is the correct one.

The simplest explanation to me is what @sej says - the whole Russian people have had the same brain damage, the whole Chinese people also have their own common brain damage, etc for all other people. That explains why we have different accents.

(I think we also have different ways of talking inside lifts)

[farah]

i can be pretty clumsy at times so my only defense is that i am trying to be funny or practising a new move. had i been white skin they would have understood that i was embarassesed.

anyways how about those people who goes out of the country for a few days and comes back with an accent? what's the diagnosis for this disease?

[fardel]

Being a seasoned traveller (°_°), I have THE only valid explanation about accents;
It all depends on what you eat,and the seasoning which comes with it, hence the expression seasoned traveller.....
this affects the neurons in your brain or the buds on your tongue , therefore affecting the way it moves in your mouth;
The strentgh of the acccent ( or lack of it ) depends of the heat from the chilis you find in your dishes.

Tequila and tacos....Olé
Beer and Sauerkraut, Dankechen fraülen
Vodka Spasebo
Sake HaraKiri
Aguardiente,,Ayombé
Baguette and camembert , Bonjour Paris
Hamburger Hi man
Boiled Rost beeef and mint sauce , Jolly good
Kangaroo steak , Hey mite
Pizza Mamma Mia
Sangria with ( or without paëlla) Ole ( with continental accent, this times)
All the other explanations you read about or hear about are bull...........

Now I have another tip for getting the local accent or for learning a language fast, (but do not tell uncle Nury that I am the one giving you this advice)
:Pillow learning

[Juvy]

At first, I was doubting whether FAS (Foreign Accent Syndrome) is a real disease. Then I googled it and I found it in Wikipedia. Nury, you're really something!

[Lia]

Wait until the Hollywood directors learn about this. Or...have they?

[Christy]

@ TS

one of my Linguistics lecturer reported the same problem, that of his fifth language (Cantonese) influencing his first (English). He caught himself using the "l" sound instead of "n" for "knowledge" in class :)

I'm also having the same problem with my English, my friends all say a weird Arab accent is creeping into my English...

[Karuna]

@Christy, have similar problem with my 6th language(Cantonese) influencing my 4th language(Hindi)
Find myself using Cantonese numbers when talking in Hindi !! And the taxi driver goes "agggrrhh"

[Angela]

aiyah!!

language smanguegh!

singlish is da bestest in ol da wold!

[cris c.]

DIGS!: ) Anyway, a little off-topic, i'd like to comment as well about a few comedians who claim they have the filipino accent. when fil-ams do stand up in the States and start mixing their P's with F's, and their B's and V's, they are actually representing only certain ethnic groups, mostly in the visayan region (dialects of cebuanos, bicolanos, etc). Someday i want to hear comedians lifting the Tagalog accent, which is the main dialect in Manila. i often get feedback that my contacts know when a Filipino is in a conference call, but i'm not convinced the dialect strong enough to surface or be recognized like indian or russian immediately. they tell us we read every letter in each word, which is kind of true. i'd like to see a westerner mimic that and tell me how hard it is!

i went to bangkok and the tour guide recognized i was filipino because of my accent. i was a bit flattered to be distinct like that!