A Woman Who Wawoke Up With a Chinese Accent
If you’re learning Chinese, then chances are you’ve gotten frustrated with the fact that your pronunciation isn’t quite there yet. You want to sound like a native speaker!
Luckily, there are ways to practice your Chinese and get that authentic accent. One of the best ways is to listen to native speakers with a clear accent.
Sarah Colwill
For most people, severe headache pain would be enough to send them to their local doctors. But 38-year-old Sarah Colwill from Plymouth, UK, was sent to the hospital for a migraine — and when she woke up her usual Devonshire drawl had been replaced by what sounds like a Chinese accent. Colwill now finds herself in the midst of a rare condition called Foreign Accent Syndrome. In a new documentary, Colwill explains the impact the disorder has had on her life.
The Woman Who Woke Up Chinese, airing Tuesday on BBC One, follows Colwill as she tries to understand why her English accent suddenly changed into a completely foreign one. It’s a difficult task, as the doctor who diagnosed her with FAS explained to BBC News: “The way the brain works in these situations is that certain areas of the brain are damaged, and they can affect things such as language.”
Normally, when someone loses their accent it happens over time, or after some form of therapy. But according to the experts interviewed in the documentary, Colwill’s case was different. FAS is caused by neurological trauma or damage to the frontal lobe of the brain, which controls speech and word formation. It can be the result of a stroke, traumatic brain injury or psychiatric illness.
In cases where the cause of the condition is unknown, it can last a few days or years. For some, the original accent can return spontaneously or through speech therapy. But for others, like Sarah, it may never come back.
In the meantime, Colwill has been trying to deal with her bizarre situation as best she can. But her plight hasn’t made her a laughing stock, as the film shows. At a hair salon, for instance, she struggles with her native accent when the stylist asks her if she’d like to have her hair cut in a traditional style. She sighs, clearly frustrated.
Foreign Accent Syndrome
For people with Foreign Accent Syndrome, a sudden, unexplained change in their speech can be distressing. Fortunately, this rare condition is usually caused by neuroglial damage, a neurological disease or mental health issues, and it can be treated with speech therapy. The condition is most often triggered by an injury to the part of the brain that controls how we form sounds, called Broca’s area. This is the same part of the brain that causes some people with aphasia to lose their ability to write and speak. In a 2019 study that looked at 112 cases of FAS, most of the people diagnosed with this condition were adults and right-handed. They also had no history of contact with the country or region whose accent their speech resembled. Some people have trouble reverting to their normal accent, but others find that the symptoms fade over time.
One theory about this condition is that people who are born with a stronger articulation, like native English speakers, may have a harder time speaking certain sounds, like the “r” in words like “car” or “carriage.” That’s why it might be more common for someone who has a strong English accent to develop a faux French or Chinese accent after a head injury.
However, some researchers believe that a person’s accent can be affected even if the cause of their symptoms isn’t physical damage to the brain or nervous system. In these cases, the person might have a mental illness that affects how they perceive their own speech, such as conversion disorder or schizophrenia.
The BBC documentary follows the life of Sarah Colwill, who suffers from Foreign Accent Syndrome, one of just 61 people diagnosed with it since 1907. She says her experience has been “a horrible thing to go through.”
Although these stories are embraced by many reincarnation believers, medical professionals recognize that this is a real medical condition that can be very distressing for those who have it. If you’ve experienced a sudden change in your accent, see a healthcare provider as soon as possible. They will ask about your symptoms and do a thorough physical exam, including a neurological exam. They might also order an MRI or single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scans to look for any changes in your brain’s activity.
Documentary
Helen went to bed with a migraine and woke up with a strange voice. She knew it wasn’t her own, but she couldn’t figure out where the accent came from. It didn’t help that her friends hung up on her when they heard her new accent or that she was treated like a foreigner in her own city. Her mother-in-law even called to demand she snap out of it. It turns out that this was not an isolated case. Helen has a type of foreign accent syndrome that’s sometimes called neurogenic FAS. It’s a rare condition that can be caused by a brain injury. It can cause other problems as well, such as paralysed arms and legs or blackouts. 7
Other people have developed foreign accents due to head trauma, stroke, tumors and multiple sclerosis.
Medical Theory
There is a very rare condition known as Foreign Accent Syndrome, which causes the sufferer to develop a foreign accent in spite of no physical changes to their body. This is believed to occur when the brain has been impacted by some sort of trauma. It is not clear why this happens, but it is thought to be due to a disruption in the part of the brain that controls motor speech. This leads to the lengthening of syllables and altered pitch of sound among other things. This is very different from a normal speech change, and can be difficult for doctors to diagnose as no physical damage can be seen on state-of-the-art brain scans.
Sarah Colwill has lived with this peculiar disorder since 2010. Despite taking elocution lessons and attending numerous speech therapy sessions, she still cannot shake her new accent. It is incredibly frustrating for her, and has changed every aspect of her life. She now finds herself being ridiculed when ordering fried rice at restaurants, and has to explain her entire backstory to people she meets.
It is unclear what caused her speech to change, but she was suffering from a severe migraine headache just prior to her awakening with a Chinese accent. She has also been plagued with constant tummy pains and a lack of energy.
Many of us think of modern medicine as being based on a scientific method. But it is important to remember that even the most modern of medicines are rooted in ancient ideas and traditions, including humoral theory. A fundamental tenet of this tradition is that “science never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows him how he must act if he wishes to attain definite ends” (Thagard).
This is an essential insight into the human condition, which is, in essence, an unknowable, but highly complex phenomenon. Attempting to understand it requires a great deal of intuition, creativity and courage. In addition to examining the physical symptoms, it is vitally important to take into account the mental and emotional effects of a disease.
