March 28, 2017 • 47 mins
Foreign accent syndrome isn't when your mom talks funny when she goes abroad. It's an actual condition where people wake up one day with an entirely different accent, usually from some kind of head trauma. Learn all about this decidedly rare affliction today.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, March is tripod month, my friend, and you know
what that means. Yes, that means it's time to let
people know about your favorite podcasts, just to share the
sheer joy of podcast listening. That's right, it's t r
y pod. Still in nascent industry. A lot of people
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(00:20):
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who I see it? Thanksgiving once a year? Right, you
should try out this thing called a podcast. Here's what
they are. Here's a cool show you should try, and
here's how to get it. Yeah, and it doesn't have
to be our show, just any podcast you like in
general that you think someone else would like, just share it. Yeah,
So get on board the dry pod train. Welcome to
(00:44):
Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here is always So
it's stuff you should know. Stuff you should You should
(01:04):
have said that in a British accent. It's stuff you
should know. Hey, how was that? It was great? You're
a regular rich little remember the arrest development little subplot
where Charlie Starren. It was thought to be a British spy.
(01:25):
Oh yeah, what was for British eyes only? Yeah? But
what was um? The name of her character, mr F
mr F. That's right, that's right. Anyw I had some
like they said that every time. Right, it was pretty funny.
She's great. Yeah, she was pretty lady, funny, smart, Yeah,
good actor? What else? That's all I got on her?
(01:49):
She can macrom Oh really, I don't know. I just assume. Okay,
this is after a great start. Uh uh is it's unusual?
Odd even you could say that. You suggested I say
the intro in a British accent because we're talking about
(02:10):
foreign accents today, Chuck, that's right, it was COI mm hmm.
I see now that makes sense. Yes, and we're specifically
not talking about um. There's a thing sometimes that certain
people do when they meet someone with a an accent
different than their own, where they accidentally or sometimes purposely,
(02:36):
adopted momentarily. Yes, it's called code switching. My mom has
done this before that I remember. It happened when I
was a kid. My brother and I thought it was
so funny. Yeah. Yeah, And it seems like it's usually
apparent of an embarrassed child. Sure, um and is there
(02:58):
an explanation behind it? Yeah? Yeah? So? Um so this
is from what I understand, This is the point. Right. So,
our accents are extremely personal. They're part of like us individually,
but they also signal our membership in different groups. Right. So,
like a farmer is gonna talk differently from a stockbroker,
(03:19):
and a farmer from UH, Georgia is going to talk
a lot differently than a stockbroker from UH Portland, Oregon,
right because it's the other stock market seat. They thought
I was gonna say New York. Nope. Um. So when
we when we code switch, when we meet other people
(03:39):
and take on their their way of talking, it's called
code switching. And I think it's a way of signaling, hey,
I we have something in comment. I don't want you
to be distracted by Yeah my my overalls with no
shirt on are distracting enough. I don't want you to
be distracted by my accent too. So I think it
is a way of saying, like, hey, I'm, i'm, I'm,
(04:02):
we have something in common. The thing is, accents are
such a part of group identity that if you do
that in front of some other members of your group,
whether it's your family or your friends or whatever, they're
gonna tease you. They are going to tease you, guaranteed.
And one of the reasons why is because what they're doing,
consciously or otherwise is maintaining the borders of their own
(04:24):
group's identity. They're saying, don't put on airs, don't think
you're fancy, don't think you're just like that guy, You're
one of us, and and making fun of somebody who
adopts someone else's accent as a way of doing that,
it's a way of maintaining group divisions and borders where really,
when you do kind of adopt someone else's accent, I
(04:45):
think one of the things that you are doing is
trying to make the foreigner, the stranger feel more comfortable.
And having met your mom, I guarantee that's what she
was doing. Well. I just remember the only one I
remember specifically, and you know, you just said these random
eildhood moments that sort of stick with you, was we
were in Florida and we were talking with uh, an
(05:06):
Irish woman. I believe she may have been from England,
but I think she was Irish. And the other thing too, is,
you know, I don't. I don't think my mom had
probably talked to a lot of Irish people at that point.
You know, she's from West Tennessee and moved to Georgia.
We didn't have Irish people all over the place. She
wasn't super well traveled back then, although she is much
(05:27):
more now. Um so it was probably a bit novel
to her. And I remember very specifically, the woman said
something about going to Disney, uh instead of Disney World,
and my mom said, she got kind of proper and
she says, you know, we haven't been to Disney yet.
And I remember my brother and I just thought that
was so funny instead of saying Disney World. Did you
guys make fun of her of the woman? No, I
(05:50):
don't think so. We may have laughed a little um
under our breath, but I mean, I don't think we.
I don't think we even teased her. I'm teasing her
now a bit, but um, I don't think like we
made fun of her. Really. I think we just kind of,
like my brother and I want to do, very quietly,
looked at each other and in that way that brothers do, right,
(06:10):
and then talk to each other like the kids and
escape from which mountain? Yeah, or they telepathic? Uh, but
it's funny. I was listening to um the Great Judge
John Hodgman podcast with our pal John in Class Jesse
Thorne Bailiff Jesse, and they had an actual case a
few weeks ago that was very funny where this this
mom um does this on purpose. She's a trained actor
(06:35):
and loves to put on accents when she goes to places,
and the daughter was just she took her to the
uh Internet court and was just like stop doing this,
like you've got to stop doing this. And the mom's
whole thing, she was very just fun and whimsical and
having a lot of fun with it. So it was
(06:56):
really hard to to rule against her. But I think
Jaman ultimately did rule against her. He's tough, but well,
I think his whole thing was, like, you know, I
think he ruled partially in her favor, like you gotta
let him know where you're from. And you can't do
it to like waiters and service people because their job
(07:17):
is to like take your dumb jokes and and have
a stiff upper lip about it, and it just kind
of makes their job harder if they think maybe you're
making fun of them, and you know, like you may
not realize the unintended consequence of this is somebody may
feel uncomfortable that they have to put up with this. Wow,
that was It was a really serious turn at the
(07:39):
end there, you know it did? I mean, you know
that what's great about that show is it's they're funny cases,
but he adjudicates seriously. I think, well, yeah, and then
Jesse always shoots his gun off at the end. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh So, anyway, I just thought it was pretty weird
that this article came up and then that episode had
just aired. But that's different than what we were talking
(08:00):
about totally. Like I started saying, this is not that
at all. This is a legitimate, super rare. This reminded
me of alien hand syndrome and its rarity, um because
I've seen different numbers, but the most I've seen is
about a hundred and fifty um described official cases of
(08:21):
foreign accent syndrome. Right, That's that's super rare for sure.
And what makes it different from somebody taking on the
affect or dialect or accident of somebody else. Someone's taking
the piss, right, this is this is where you you
can't stop. It's involuntary. Yeah, and you know it sounds weird.
It's an ecdotic, and you just wanted to like poke
(08:44):
the person who's doing that in the next to be
like what are you doing there? But if you really
started to dig into the actual cases, it's sad and
a lot of a lot of cases. Yeah, Because again,
your accent, what you sound like, makes up a part
of your personality. So if you are if it, if
it changes on you involuntarily, it can be quite traumatic
(09:05):
for some people. You could have an identity crisis of sorts. Yeah. So, um,
I guess we should just go ahead and talk about
a couple of cases so people know what we're talking about. Um.
The first one mentioned in our own article is really
interesting for a few reasons. Uh. And it's the most
recent case that's documented. Um. I'm sorry it's not the
most recent, but it is fairly recent. Woman named Lisa
(09:25):
Ala mia Um. She had jaw surgery because of an overbite,
and then when she came out of surgery, even though
she was from Texas and had never been to England,
she spoke with a British accent and she's like, right,
bloody hell and h any way, I I need our
British listeners right in and tell me how how good
(09:47):
my British accented. Okay, well, I'm known on the show
for doing the bad accent, so I'm glad you're taking
up now. Yours are good. I don't know minor. They
verge on decent at times. Well there's carto iss and stereotypical,
but really really good continuous stereotypical versions of accents. Uh.
So she woke up had that accent in her husband
(10:08):
and three kids. I thought it was a joke. Um,
she had only been outside the country to go to
Mexico and it was a real thing called foreign exit syndrome. Yeah,
she'd never been to England. She apparently probably had seen
British people on TV kind of thing. But her case
actually is the opposite of what I was saying. She
was apparently, um, quite shy before, and now she has
(10:34):
something to talk about a conversation opener. I guess she's
a little more chatty than before. Yeah, it is. It's
it's the opposite of of some other people who have
really experienced a crisis. As a results, she's like, well
I saw him British. Now I guess I should talk
more than before. So she sounds like a drunk cockney
chimney sweep pretty much. And she does sound cockney to me. Really,
(10:56):
I didn't hear I didn't see this one on YouTube,
so yeah, we should say. You know, this is kind
of like optical illusions. It's one thing to talk about it,
you need to actually go see and hear these people talking. Um.
If you just look up Lisa Alamia A l A
M I A and you will find plenty of interviews
with her. Um, she's she's, like you said, fairly recent.
(11:20):
There's one that's a quite a famous case, maybe the
most famous because it was the one that put foreign
accent syndrome on the map, even though it was before
the term was coined. Yeah, this one had had a
much darker turn, um because it was during World War Two.
A Norwegian woman named Astrid suffered injury. Um. And the
(11:40):
ironies here are really sad. She suffered a brain injury
from shrapnel from a German bomb and a bombing raid,
and then when she came to she had a German accent. Right,
very not fun for her, No, because the Germans were
occupying Norway at the time, right, so people she didn't
(12:00):
really know, we're like, oh, hey German spy, Yeah you
want some milk? No milk for you? Yeah, she was shunned. Um.
She couldn't even speak German, but she had that accent
and was obviously very distraught by this, and she went
to a neurologist. Name your Erman, Monrad Crohne. Nice job,
(12:23):
it's a great name. And um he coined the first
term uh for this, which is uh this prosody, which
is a prosody is like the tone and rhythm of
your speech, and the prefixed discs obviously is like abnormal
or ill um And that didn't catch on too well.
It didn't, but as we'll see, he kind of nailed
(12:45):
what the problem was because you know, the the the
non grammatical parts of speech, the prosody or what is affected.
When you have foreign accent syndrome. You you have what
appears to be a foreign accent, but you're usually your vocabulary,
your syntax, your grammar remains unchanged. It's all the little
(13:08):
nuances that make up your accent or your intonation or
the rhythm of your speech that are affected and has changed.
So this prosody is actually like the perfect name for
the syndrome. Yeah, but foreign accent syndrome is way more
catchy and that it's sexy in uh, neurologist named Harry
Whittaker came up with that um so A Whittaker coined
(13:30):
it in the eighties. Uh, I think two was when
he coined that official term, right, and he he was
a neuro linguist who did some pretty serious research into
foreign accent syndrome. He actually came up with a four
point criteria for diagnosing it. And the number one is
that the accent has to be considered by the patient,
(13:50):
the people the patient knows, and the researcher the doctor
to be to sound like a foreign accent, right for
pretty straightfor from what they are. Yeah, well that's number
number Two. It has to be different from the patient's
former prosody, noticeably different. Number three it has to be
(14:10):
related to central nervous system damage and this one has
come under fire under the last few years. And then
four it can't be related to a patient's ability to
speak a foreign language already. Right, So there's actually a condition,
it's astounding to me. It's called bilingual aphasia, or there's
also polyglott aphasia. And apparently if you suffer a stroke
(14:35):
or brain injury or some other trauma insult to your
central nervous system, and you know, more than one language.
You may completely lose the ability to speak one language
and completely retain the ability to speak the other. That's
how decentralized our language processes in the brain. Well, yeah,
(14:56):
because that's one of the factors in for UH accent
syndrome is you could it's not like UH in a
case where you might have a stroke and lose the
ability to speak like, you still can speak in perfect
dialect whatever that dialect is as far as being you know,
articulate and coherent. Oh right, right, yeah, yeah, so you're
you're yeah, exactly, You're not like slurring your speech. You
(15:20):
just sound different and like a foreign person saying the
same words would. Right, Oh, gotcha. Okay, So there's this
four point diagnosis criteria that's kind of been deconstructed over
the years. Um. But the problem with foreign accent syndrome it's,
like you said, Um, there's been a hundred, maybe a
hundred and fifty cases, So it's just totally up in
(15:43):
the air as to like how did diagnose it, what
qualifies as that? And we'll talk a little bit about
how scientists have dug into it thus far after this break,
(16:17):
so chuck forign accent syndrome. It's kind of all over
the place right now. Right You've got um Lisa Lamia
Um who woke up from jawl surgery with it. Apparently
people who have strokes can um can suffer from foreign
accent syndrome. Uh. And I actually saw one case where
(16:38):
your foreign accent syndrome and one patient who suffered a
stroke was cured by a second stroke elsewhere in the brain.
So we have like it's very tough to predict what's
going to happen when foreign accent syndrome does come about.
And you know, there's been people from Japan who developed
(16:59):
Korean act sense, or there have been people from Scotland
who developed South African accents. Um. It's it's kind of
everywhere and all over. Yeah, you can. One of the
other causes. It can be from the onset of MS
from multiple sclerosis. UM. This one woman that we'll talk
(17:19):
about in more details suffered from chronic migraines but had
a migraine attack so severe that it it's spurred this
and we'll get to her. But all of these in
a bucket from some sort of trauma or an event
are called uh neurogenic type. And for a long time
they used to think that was the only way that
(17:41):
you could get for an excellent syndrome, right, because I
remember that Harry Whittaker two criteria specifically says it has
to be related to central nervous system damage. Yeah. So
there's another kind called psychogenic, also non organic or functional
or psychosomatic. But um, one of the leading experts said
(18:02):
that they prefer psychogenic. Uh. He said because quote this
term has the advantage of stating positively based on an
exploration of its causes, that the disorder is a manifestation
of psychic psychological dis equilibrium like anxiety depression, personality disorder,
or conversion reaction in quote um, and you know we're
(18:23):
talking about could be bipolar disorder, it could be some
other form of mental illness. And UM, this really kind
of rocked. I mean, it's not a huge community studying this,
but the people that do are obviously super fascinated by it,
and it kind of rocked their world when they found
out that someone that had no head injury, no stroke,
(18:43):
or anything like that would could have something like this. Yeah.
So they developed UM first was neurogenic, then they developed psychogenic,
and then there's actually a third one now it's mixed.
So apparently it can actually be from a psychological issue
that possibly could arise from, say a brain lesion. So
it's both of them together working to create this foreign
(19:04):
accent syndrome and definitely psychogenic. The psychogenic version of foreign
accent syndrome differs tremendously from the neurogenic in a lot
of ways, and number one is the psychogenic tends to
clear up and accompanies say like a psychotic break or
a manic episode or something like that UM, And as
(19:26):
the episode wanes or goes away or clears up, so
too does the foreign accent syndrome. That is not the
case with neurogenic. With neurogenic, they have no cure whatsoever,
and basically the only treatment that they can come up
with is UM through speech therapy, where speech language pathologists
basically retrained you to talk the way you did before. Yeah,
(19:48):
it's also, uh, the neurogenic is also much more common
out of the cases I think it's about are from
some sort of neurological damage, right, So what does that
leave for to percent or unless I guess you're accounting
for the new super odd one that is could be both. Um.
One of the more famous cases that kind of demonstrated
(20:11):
that psychogenic f A S was an actual thing. UM
happened here in America. There's a woman in her mid
thirties who had a history of schizophrenia and her family
and she was brought to the e R after attacking
her mom's landlady. Yeah, this one's the most recent case actually,
and she um. She she believed the landlady was practicing
(20:32):
voodoo on her against her, and she attacked the woman.
UM and throughout all this, during this episode, she had
taken on a British accent and taking a family history,
they found that number one, she had schizophrenia or family
She was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a result of this incident,
but that she had had similar instances before and during
(20:52):
these she had spoken with the British accent. Yeah. I wonder,
I didn't see anything in there about her if she
like had a I mean that another personality. Is that
multiple personality disorder? I don't believe. So that's not what
I took from it, because that would make sense, you know,
if you have a just a British personality that came
out that's violent maybe or something. Yeah, well, I mean
(21:15):
we remember we I think we've done one on schizophrenia before,
haven't we. I don't know, haven't we. We definitely did
one on dissociative personality disorder UM, which was just absolutely fascinating.
But I was I like you, I kind of noticed, like, hey,
what about multiple personality? So it doesn't it seems like
something that would be right up that alley. I'm sure
(21:36):
they've looked into that, but apparently apparently that's not part
of it. Yeah. Um, another case that I said we
were going to get to those, This one is really
weird um and super sad. This woman named Sarah Calwill
in England. She is the one that had the migraine
that set it off. And uh, this one is super
(21:57):
odd because she's an English woman who now has a
Chinese accent. I mean just straight up sounds Chinese and
like broken English Chinese right right, So she sounds like
a native UM. I think Man Mandarin speaker is probably
(22:17):
what we're thinking of. Who um is speaking English? And
if you weren't looking like you would expect to see,
say maybe like a middle aged Chinese woman. Uh when
you looked at the at the video and no, it's
like I don't know, late late to mid thirties. Um,
Caucasian woman, native born English speaker. Who. Um, and she's
(22:43):
who I was thinking of when I was saying for
some people, is is a really big problem because it's
presented a big crisis for her identity. She said that
she can't look in the mirror while she's speaking any longer.
She just doesn't feel like herself anymore. It's really hit
her hard. Yeah, I mean she her case is really sad.
It was I think two thousand and ten when she
was diagnosed after this migraine incident and in um she
(23:10):
couldn't work anymore. Uh, and she she has she has
a lot and more issues going on than just the
speech with these uh migraines that have come on. She's
um got a whole range of physical problems that she's
had to stop work. She's in a wheelchair. Even though
her limbs completely work, her brain basically can't tell her
limbs to do what they should do. So um from migraines. Yeah,
(23:34):
from I think these really extreme migraines. I think they
even likened it to like having a stroke. They were
so severe. Um. So she's had to sell her house,
and I think her husband is afflicted with something too.
It's just a really really sad case. But um, you know,
you can there's all kinds of interviews with her, and
it's just so strange to hear that accent coming out
(23:56):
of uh, this white lady. It is from what I gather,
she'd be like, yeah, well, imagine how strange it feels
coming out of you. Oh yeah, you know. And you know,
I saw videos where they would sit down and play her.
Uh and before I looked up further that she was
having even more troubled times, it seemed like she was
getting a little better throughout the interview through therapy because
(24:18):
they were playing her. One of the things they do
is they play old recordings of herself and she would
sit down and listen to them and try and mimic it,
and um, which kind of brought up one of my
questions is can you even mimic an accent? Like you
know people can fake an accent, Like can you even
do that? Uh? And I didn't get an answer on that,
but um, then you're just mimicking an accent your entire
(24:43):
life too, even if you could you know. So that's
problematic on its own. But um, it seemed like she
was getting a little bit better in that interview, but
apparently not. It's really sad, Yeah it is. I mean,
like it's bad enough you've got migraines and then to
have a crisis of identity. Yeah, it's yeah, not fair.
So one of the other things it's, um really troubling
(25:03):
is you can't just just go to a neurologist and
get it cleared up. Um. They're a whole range of
doctors that you'll probably see along the way, including a neurologist.
Um you talked about a speech language pathologist. You might
go to a clinical psychologist to deal with the fallout
from everything. Uh, maybe a neuro psychologist, maybe a radiologist.
(25:27):
You might see you know, six and eight doctors and
still not get anywhere, right because I can't do a
lot for you. We don't know how to treat strokes
very well. And once damage has has occurred in the brain,
it can be pretty tough, if not impossible, to reverse
that damage. Right, it's permanently damaged. Um. So yeah, the
(25:52):
the idea that you're you've now gotten a foreign accent.
They're probably like, that's kind of the least of your words.
You just had a massive stroke or a huge head
injury or something like that. But what it's revealed to
them is not that there's this huge mystery, and we
we have kind of played into it a little bit
by not revealing this from the outset. But you you,
(26:14):
as a patient with foreign accent syndrome, it didn't hit
your head and wake up with the foreign accent. It's
all in the ear of the beholder. The whole idea
that there is a foreign accent syndrome is as the
way that it stated is false, and we'll talk about
that after this break. Okay, Chuck, we're back. So I
(27:00):
thought I heard you draw in a breath right before
we bro That might have been did you have something
to say? Yeah, I think I have a little trouble
wrapping my head around this whole idea that it's only
in the ear of the person, because if you know
that lady clearly has a Chinese accent, it's not oh,
(27:20):
I'm just hearing it that way. So they've actually been
studies where they've played a video clip of her, audio
clip of a person with foreign accent syndrome to different
people and said, you know, where do you think this
person is from? And the same person will get tens
of different answers out of tens of different people. Yeah,
(27:43):
I don't know. I mean that makes sense in some cases,
I think, But I don't see how anyone could hear
this woman and say she sounds British to me, right, well, no, no, no,
she she definitely doesn't sound Bridge. But that's the point.
She sounds Chinese, but she's not actually speaking in a
Chinese accent. She didn't hit her head and wake up
with a Chinese accent. What happened was she got these
(28:06):
series of migraines, probably had some sort of stroke, and
a region of her brain that controls the really intricate
process of prosody, of making your tongue do certain things
to intonate an accent, certain words in certain ways that
make up your accent and your dialect. Overall that got damaged,
(28:28):
and so now she can't control it in the way
she used to before. It comes out sounding differently. And
to you, somebody who has heard people speak in a
Chinese accent before, it sounds like a Chinese accent. That's
the difference. Yeah, so they don't get that. What I
do get though, is we take second nature just when
we open our mouth we talk. We don't realize the
(28:49):
complex series of events that's going on to make your
voice come out the way it does. So you know
you're you're well in the brain, they think, um, and
again the mysteries of the brain, they're there. What how
you create speeches really complex and involves all kind of
areas of the brain, but UH specifically damaged in the
(29:10):
left hemisphere and the cerebral artery they know a lot
of times can cause foreign accent syndrome. But when you're speaking,
you're using your tongue, you're using your lips, your jaw, uh,
your larynx, and the way all these things combine and
who you are UH is gonna make you have and
we should do one on accents period. But um, it's
(29:32):
gonna control how your speech comes out. So and the
you know, the one example they use in here is
if you know you have a little too much to
drink those you know, you might lose some of that
muscle control and you might slow your words or talk
funny or differently. So that's a pretty pretty basic way
of understanding it. But um, I know, vowels are are
(29:55):
sort of a big deal when it comes to foreign
accent syndrome. Yeah, if you if you say ad and
stay a um, or you substitute consonants like R for L. Right,
so you're um, you know, uh, what's that? What were
they singing jingle bells on? Um? Oh? No? Deck the
(30:17):
halls on a Christmas story? Ra. Right. So if you
were a Caucasian English speaker and that you damaged your
brain in a way that the the part of your
brain responsible for forming l's now formed ours instead. To
other English speakers who had heard um native Chinese speakers,
(30:40):
you would sound like you had a Chinese accent, because
that's what people who speak Chinese do when they're speaking English.
So you didn't actually adopt a Chinese accent. You're just
creating sounds in the same way that somebody who was
a native Chinese speaker would. Yeah, I mean, I see
what they're getting at with all this. To me, it's
(31:02):
a little bit splitting hairs. I think that's what I'm
trying to say. I think the difference is this chuck
with your your accent, your native accent, your native dialect
is the result of your exposure to your environment right lifelong,
all the people around you, all the stuff you've learned,
all the things you've heard. It creates your dialect. Right
(31:25):
when you suffer foreign accent syndrome, your dialect, your brain
is damage so that you can't produce that anymore, and
you just kind of haphazardly producing something else you don't
actually follow. So, like if you took uh Sarah cal
Calwill's language and had her read a passage from a book,
(31:48):
and then you had a native Chinese speaker, typical accented
Mandarin speaker read that same passage, it would not be
the exact same thing. There'd be all sorts of derivations
and deviations from that normal Mandarin accent because Sarah Colwell's
brain was damaged in a certain way that makes it
a totally unique accent. Yeah, I get that, but that
(32:12):
happens within the Mandarin accent between people too. You're not
letting this one. Just don't get it. One thing I
do get is that there's no like. And this is
probably what's so frustrating, or one of the things so
frustrating is it's not like they wake up with a
new cultural identity either, I mean, this woman still wants
(32:32):
to have her tea and biscuits every afternoon, but when
she says that, she says it with Chuck would call
it a Chinese accent. A neurologist would say, well, you're
just hearing that right, Uh So you know, it's like
you said, people suffer a bit from uh their own
like sense of self, you know, because see here's what
(32:56):
I wonder, isn't in there Do they hear it in
their head as their own regular accent? I don't think so. No.
I think it sounds off to them, and I think
it's probably distressing because they're like, wait, let me say
that again, and they still say it the what they
perceive is the wrong way, because apparently one of the
hallmarks of for an accent syndrome is the errors or
(33:18):
the differences that they make, uh pro in their prosody
is predictable, which makes it like an accent. I mean,
that's what an accent as is. You're going to drop
your ta s or replace the T with the th,
h with the D just about every time I add
that are when you say wash um yeah exactly, Like
(33:39):
that's it's a predictable thing, and that's part of foreign
accent syndroma. It starts to happen in predictable ways too,
so I would guess, yeah, it sounds off to them
as well well. Because the reason I say that is
because when um, like, and I think I've talked about this,
when my grandfather had a stroke, he still talked, but
it just came as gibberish. But in his head he
(34:02):
was saying the things that he was trying to say,
which is, you know, one of the most frustrating things
I think after a stroke victim is I remember seeing
him talk and getting so frustrated. He would just you know,
say things out loud and it would come out as
gibberish to us, but in his head he's still saying,
you know, his English words, they's gotta make you feel
(34:23):
trapped in your body. Yeah. Um. However, f A S
is a little all over the map because there have
been other weird cases. Because we've been saying this whole time,
there's not un new identity. It's the same, Uh, You're
saying the same words and everything. But there have been
cases where people do substitute outwards, like you would say
(34:46):
lift instead of an elevator, right, That's like the psychogenic version.
I know, it's just so confusing. Well it almost makes
me think, like, so before there was nothing but neurogenic
foreign accent syndrome, right, everything else was you're just crazy.
Now they they recognize that they're psychogenic f A S
(35:06):
as well. I think what's gonna happen with more and
more study, They're gonna just diverge into two totally different syndromes. Now, Yeah,
that makes sense, you know. I think they're gonna be like,
that's actually not the same thing. That's something totally different.
Neurogenic for an extent syndrome is its own thing, and
psychogenic is is something else entirely. I'll just make up
(35:27):
a new name. Yeah. Uh. This one other case I
thought was interesting about the Dutch woman, which one she
was Dutch is Dutch and she developed a French accent,
but she spoke Dutch using French syntax and occasionally for
in French words as if she was a French person
(35:50):
learning Dutch. And it turns out that she was a
Dutch language teacher who taught French people to speak Dutch.
And I don't know it's her psychogenic or neurogenic. It
would have to be psychogenic because neurogenic has basically that
original um Harry Whittaker criteria use different words and things. Well,
(36:13):
well it was it has to not be related to
the patient's ability to speak a foreign language. So like
that she would be technically canceled out from neurogenic for
that one, and um it would also it didn't have
anything to do with with central nervous system damage, which
is again that's why I think it's gonna end up
(36:33):
being its own thing. Man. So interesting it is? Uh,
that's all I've got. Man, isn't that enough? Man? Any
language stuff? Anytime we talk about language in the brain,
I guess neural linguistics. I just turned to Google. It's
so interesting to me. Yeah, that's what happens when something
(36:55):
interests me. I turned to Google. If you want to
turn to Goo and learn are about foreign accent syndrome.
You can type those words in the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And since I said that,
it's time for Chuck administrated details. How was that? That
(37:16):
was great? Man? So Chuck, Yes, we've got some more
people to thank for sending us some nice stuff. That's right.
I'm gonna start off with Nathan for latso Uh, he's
sent some really lovely hand drawn calendars and bookmarks. Um.
And you can find those at Wildlife dot Wildlife dot
(37:38):
Marini for Latso dot com dot au. And that's M
A R I and I F E R l A
z z O dot com dot Au. And um, it
was really really beautiful work and it's it's a cool
thing because a portion of every sale is donated to
a nonprofit wildlife organization. Very nice. I think you handle
(38:00):
at Foreign Accent very well. Thank you. Um. I want
to say thanks big time to Robert Combs or Combs
from White Tail Coffee for the amazing coffees. Um, especially
like seriously, it's a really good coffee, especially the Ladaris
and Lamarella. Um. And that's white Tail t A L E. Coffee. Uh.
(38:23):
It's just an amazing coffee subscription service that you should
check out. Uh. I got a couple of more coffees.
I'll just knock them both out. You have one sitting,
actually have two of them sitting on your desk right now,
my friend, wait to grab them. True Stone Coffee Roasters
from St. Paul, Minnesota, Sin. It's their medium blend and
I can't vouch for the taste yet because it just
got here, but it smells good. And then devon from
(38:45):
True Coffee Roasters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, Sinus uh dark roasted
Sumatra and in Mexico Alutra. I'm sorry, altera nice, thanks
a lot coffee coming out our ears. It's great. That's
a good place to be. But we're not gonna have diabetes.
My friend now, Doug Fuchs, sent us a beautiful illustrated card.
(39:08):
Thanks for that dog, Thanks for saying hi. Meg from Seattle,
she sent me a card about Lauren's passing my cat
which I lost last year, which is very very sweet.
And while I'm on that, um Buckley, my old boy
passed away a couple of weeks ago, and um, everyone
on Facebook was beyond supportive and sweet and that really
(39:30):
helped out. So thanks for that. Yeah, from everybody listening
to you, Chuck, we send our condolences. Thank you. It
was very dark time. Um. Let's see Preston Pope. He
sent us some amazing chocolates Chuck from the Chocolates V.
Just the letter v Chocolates dot Com. Uh, seriously, it's
(39:51):
good stuff. I feel bad. I feel like I'm running around.
I'm a little bit sweets that's okay, that we'll always
come back to them, okay, Uh buddy, Jeff Barney was
kind enough, and I still haven't tried it's in my fridge,
but you said it's the best. He sent us QP
Japanese mayo. Oh it's so good because of my love
(40:12):
for mayonnaise, and um, chuck, you may never go back
to American mayo again. Well, I'm finishing up a gallon
of dukes this afternoon. Yeah, I'm just gonna gonna shoot
it down and then I'm gonna dive into the QP
and see what's going on there. I gotta see what
the difference is. It's subtle, but do you You'll notice,
(40:34):
You'll say, wow, this is actually really really good mayonnaise.
All right, Well, thanks Jeff Barney for that. Um. Thanks
a lot to Tim and Joe from Primer Stories. I
don't know if you remember, but our animal rights double
parter tied into an essay I wrote, um Primer Stories
dot com and they sent t shirts to say thanks
(40:54):
for that. So thanks back for you guys. Support. Ian
Newton of the Baltimore Ski Company send us some ginger
Apple liqueur and gin. Yes, thanks a lot. Uh, Don Kent,
who last gave us some Pliny the Elder before, which
was nice, also sent us a bunch of soilent, and
(41:16):
thank you also to Soilent itself, the company who heard
our soiling episode and said, you guys haven't tried soilent. Here,
here's some soilent, and thank you for that soilent. That
was very nice. I think they got what they wanted
out of this, which is for us to say soilent
twelve times soilent. Uh. This came in today Thomas Craig
ol car k R E g L. He sent me
(41:39):
a frigging monocle. Oh that's neat. And he heard me
talking about my eyes going and how I just need
him to read things close up. And he said, buddy,
here's what you need to do because you will one
day embarrass your daughter like I embarrassed my children. You
need to rock a monocle. And it's a monocle. So
(41:59):
is he like a trained optometrist who can like no, no,
So he just gave you a piece of glass that's
gonna ruin your eye over time. Yeah, I mean I
tried it and it's you know, it's kind of like
a reader. It works about the same as my prescription,
but he uses one. He sent a little picture of
himself and uh, I guess I should plug the company.
(42:21):
It's near sites. Monocles is what he used. And UM, yeah,
I got a monocle now, job, I'm gonna use it.
Your new nickname is Pringles Guy. Okay, I've got someone else,
Pringles Guy. Janelle Samara send us a copy of her
book Our Only Hope, Thank you and congratulations on writing
(42:41):
a book. Bridget mass Off in a S. S O. T. H.
Send it's some really cute along with an extra large
handwritten note s and it's some really cute Josh and
Chuck cutouts, like kind of paper cutting paste cutouts, and
yours is on your desk. Thank you. We gotta get
out of this room and over to your desk. You
got a bounty, uh, Francis Della Pause. So you know,
(43:05):
there's like a whole group of people out there who
believe in writing letters, beautiful letters with fountain pens and
all that, and Francis Della Pause is one of them.
Sent us a beautiful handwritten letter. And you also apparently
customarily send what's called the flat gift. And they sent
a postcard the Sad Life of Sad clown which is great.
(43:28):
Sad clowns are great. Well, I got a few letters. Actually,
I'll just knock those out because Sandra maybe this was
because of International Correspondence Writing Month, Uh that we got
these because apparently that happened. But Sandra sent us a
nice handwritten letter and honor that specifically. And then Austin
from Bakersfield sent us a very nice handwritten note. And
(43:49):
then Kristen Cook sent us a Valentine State card to
all of us, including Harry Noel that Harry Knowles of
ain't it cool? New is? But our own Nuel who
was just paring. We got some other ones to chuck.
We got a lighthouse postcard from Big Sable Point from Teresa. Um,
(44:09):
we got a couple of Christmas cards from the Johnson
Alaman family and Test Sullivan and her family. Uh. And
I guess in part because the national what is it
National Writing Month or letter writing month? International Correspondence Writing month? Exactly.
Noel Verosa, no sorry, Noel veris Soza, Noel Veri Zosa.
(44:32):
It's hand written. You can't you know? I got it
that last time, Noel Noel Veri Zosa wrote us a
nice hand letter, handwritten letter in fountain pen. I've got
two more. Um, Megan Moon Waltzman. That's Megan with two g's. Oddly,
she sent us a copy of this really cool thing
she made. It's a book. It's called Songbook, a book
(44:54):
of music for all levels, all ages, and it is
eleven songs, uh, kind of written out as chords and
things and illustrated for different instruments, like there'll be a
song for guitar, an intro song for banjo, one for cello,
and it's got these cool pictures and then you can
download these songs and kind of figure it's I mean,
it says for all ages, but it seems like it'd
(45:15):
be great to give a kid, right, So check that out.
It's very worthwhile. Um, I've got two more to finish
than two. One. Austin Doyle sent me an amazing oil
craned painting um, which I assume will inflate and value
very rapidly once Austin dies. Hopefully doesn't doesn't happen, because
(45:35):
Doyle is one of our oldest uh and I don't
mean by age, but one of our longest time listeners. Yeah,
he's a great guy. I mean like when he dies
of old age, I just plan to outlive him. That's okay,
so I can catch in on the painting he made me. Uh.
And then Ben and Aaron Gibson sent us the Japanese
car magnets that signify an elderly driver or a team driver,
(45:57):
which we've talked about before. Oh yeah, yeah, I remember this, dudes.
I got one more and this one. Well, you have
no idea what's waiting in there. You just came right
into the recording studio for a change. Um on your
desk right now, Josh, I can't wait. You have a
handmade cutting board. Awesome, and it's really really nice. It's
from Christopher at the Timbered Wolf, and um, it's just
(46:21):
you know, it's gorgeous. He sent a couple of these
in and they're really really nice. Nice. So you gotta
you gotta take care of it Though'll left the instructions
for you. I got a lot of stuff to carry
out of here. Yeah, you need a someone needs to
send Josh a wheelbarrow or a radio flyer. Who I
got one of those for my kid. It's nice. Oh yeah, yeah,
the old red wagon like the real one. The radio flyer. Yeah,
(46:42):
they still make them nice. Well, thank you again to
everybody who's sent us so much great stuff. We appreciate
it big time. Uh and UH. If you want to
get in touch with us, you can tweet to us.
I'm at josh Um Clark and s Y s K podcast,
Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Stuff. He's you
know on Facebook, and you can send us both in
(47:02):
emails to stuff podcasts at how stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this
and thousands of other topics because at how stuff Works
dot com
Hey, March is tripod month, my friend, and you know
what that means. Yes, that means it's time to let
people know about your favorite podcasts, just to share the
sheer joy of podcast listening. That's right, it's t r
y pod. Still in nascent industry. A lot of people
don't know what podcasts are and helps everybody out if
(00:20):
you would go out and just say, hey, family member,
who I see it? Thanksgiving once a year? Right, you
should try out this thing called a podcast. Here's what
they are. Here's a cool show you should try, and
here's how to get it. Yeah, and it doesn't have
to be our show, just any podcast you like in
general that you think someone else would like, just share it. Yeah,
So get on board the dry pod train. Welcome to
(00:44):
Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here is always So
it's stuff you should know. Stuff you should You should
(01:04):
have said that in a British accent. It's stuff you
should know. Hey, how was that? It was great? You're
a regular rich little remember the arrest development little subplot
where Charlie Starren. It was thought to be a British spy.
(01:25):
Oh yeah, what was for British eyes only? Yeah? But
what was um? The name of her character, mr F
mr F. That's right, that's right. Anyw I had some
like they said that every time. Right, it was pretty funny.
She's great. Yeah, she was pretty lady, funny, smart, Yeah,
good actor? What else? That's all I got on her?
(01:49):
She can macrom Oh really, I don't know. I just assume. Okay,
this is after a great start. Uh uh is it's unusual?
Odd even you could say that. You suggested I say
the intro in a British accent because we're talking about
(02:10):
foreign accents today, Chuck, that's right, it was COI mm hmm.
I see now that makes sense. Yes, and we're specifically
not talking about um. There's a thing sometimes that certain
people do when they meet someone with a an accent
different than their own, where they accidentally or sometimes purposely,
(02:36):
adopted momentarily. Yes, it's called code switching. My mom has
done this before that I remember. It happened when I
was a kid. My brother and I thought it was
so funny. Yeah. Yeah, And it seems like it's usually
apparent of an embarrassed child. Sure, um and is there
(02:58):
an explanation behind it? Yeah? Yeah? So? Um so this
is from what I understand, This is the point. Right. So,
our accents are extremely personal. They're part of like us individually,
but they also signal our membership in different groups. Right. So,
like a farmer is gonna talk differently from a stockbroker,
(03:19):
and a farmer from UH, Georgia is going to talk
a lot differently than a stockbroker from UH Portland, Oregon,
right because it's the other stock market seat. They thought
I was gonna say New York. Nope. Um. So when
we when we code switch, when we meet other people
(03:39):
and take on their their way of talking, it's called
code switching. And I think it's a way of signaling, hey,
I we have something in comment. I don't want you
to be distracted by Yeah my my overalls with no
shirt on are distracting enough. I don't want you to
be distracted by my accent too. So I think it
is a way of saying, like, hey, I'm, i'm, I'm,
(04:02):
we have something in common. The thing is, accents are
such a part of group identity that if you do
that in front of some other members of your group,
whether it's your family or your friends or whatever, they're
gonna tease you. They are going to tease you, guaranteed.
And one of the reasons why is because what they're doing,
consciously or otherwise is maintaining the borders of their own
(04:24):
group's identity. They're saying, don't put on airs, don't think
you're fancy, don't think you're just like that guy, You're
one of us, and and making fun of somebody who
adopts someone else's accent as a way of doing that,
it's a way of maintaining group divisions and borders where really,
when you do kind of adopt someone else's accent, I
(04:45):
think one of the things that you are doing is
trying to make the foreigner, the stranger feel more comfortable.
And having met your mom, I guarantee that's what she
was doing. Well. I just remember the only one I
remember specifically, and you know, you just said these random
eildhood moments that sort of stick with you, was we
were in Florida and we were talking with uh, an
(05:06):
Irish woman. I believe she may have been from England,
but I think she was Irish. And the other thing too, is,
you know, I don't. I don't think my mom had
probably talked to a lot of Irish people at that point.
You know, she's from West Tennessee and moved to Georgia.
We didn't have Irish people all over the place. She
wasn't super well traveled back then, although she is much
(05:27):
more now. Um so it was probably a bit novel
to her. And I remember very specifically, the woman said
something about going to Disney, uh instead of Disney World,
and my mom said, she got kind of proper and
she says, you know, we haven't been to Disney yet.
And I remember my brother and I just thought that
was so funny instead of saying Disney World. Did you
guys make fun of her of the woman? No, I
(05:50):
don't think so. We may have laughed a little um
under our breath, but I mean, I don't think we.
I don't think we even teased her. I'm teasing her
now a bit, but um, I don't think like we
made fun of her. Really. I think we just kind of,
like my brother and I want to do, very quietly,
looked at each other and in that way that brothers do, right,
(06:10):
and then talk to each other like the kids and
escape from which mountain? Yeah, or they telepathic? Uh, but
it's funny. I was listening to um the Great Judge
John Hodgman podcast with our pal John in Class Jesse
Thorne Bailiff Jesse, and they had an actual case a
few weeks ago that was very funny where this this
mom um does this on purpose. She's a trained actor
(06:35):
and loves to put on accents when she goes to places,
and the daughter was just she took her to the
uh Internet court and was just like stop doing this,
like you've got to stop doing this. And the mom's
whole thing, she was very just fun and whimsical and
having a lot of fun with it. So it was
(06:56):
really hard to to rule against her. But I think
Jaman ultimately did rule against her. He's tough, but well,
I think his whole thing was, like, you know, I
think he ruled partially in her favor, like you gotta
let him know where you're from. And you can't do
it to like waiters and service people because their job
(07:17):
is to like take your dumb jokes and and have
a stiff upper lip about it, and it just kind
of makes their job harder if they think maybe you're
making fun of them, and you know, like you may
not realize the unintended consequence of this is somebody may
feel uncomfortable that they have to put up with this. Wow,
that was It was a really serious turn at the
(07:39):
end there, you know it did? I mean, you know
that what's great about that show is it's they're funny cases,
but he adjudicates seriously. I think, well, yeah, and then
Jesse always shoots his gun off at the end. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh So, anyway, I just thought it was pretty weird
that this article came up and then that episode had
just aired. But that's different than what we were talking
(08:00):
about totally. Like I started saying, this is not that
at all. This is a legitimate, super rare. This reminded
me of alien hand syndrome and its rarity, um because
I've seen different numbers, but the most I've seen is
about a hundred and fifty um described official cases of
(08:21):
foreign accent syndrome. Right, That's that's super rare for sure.
And what makes it different from somebody taking on the
affect or dialect or accident of somebody else. Someone's taking
the piss, right, this is this is where you you
can't stop. It's involuntary. Yeah, and you know it sounds weird.
It's an ecdotic, and you just wanted to like poke
(08:44):
the person who's doing that in the next to be
like what are you doing there? But if you really
started to dig into the actual cases, it's sad and
a lot of a lot of cases. Yeah, Because again,
your accent, what you sound like, makes up a part
of your personality. So if you are if it, if
it changes on you involuntarily, it can be quite traumatic
(09:05):
for some people. You could have an identity crisis of sorts. Yeah. So, um,
I guess we should just go ahead and talk about
a couple of cases so people know what we're talking about. Um.
The first one mentioned in our own article is really
interesting for a few reasons. Uh. And it's the most
recent case that's documented. Um. I'm sorry it's not the
most recent, but it is fairly recent. Woman named Lisa
(09:25):
Ala mia Um. She had jaw surgery because of an overbite,
and then when she came out of surgery, even though
she was from Texas and had never been to England,
she spoke with a British accent and she's like, right,
bloody hell and h any way, I I need our
British listeners right in and tell me how how good
(09:47):
my British accented. Okay, well, I'm known on the show
for doing the bad accent, so I'm glad you're taking
up now. Yours are good. I don't know minor. They
verge on decent at times. Well there's carto iss and stereotypical,
but really really good continuous stereotypical versions of accents. Uh.
So she woke up had that accent in her husband
(10:08):
and three kids. I thought it was a joke. Um,
she had only been outside the country to go to
Mexico and it was a real thing called foreign exit syndrome. Yeah,
she'd never been to England. She apparently probably had seen
British people on TV kind of thing. But her case
actually is the opposite of what I was saying. She
was apparently, um, quite shy before, and now she has
(10:34):
something to talk about a conversation opener. I guess she's
a little more chatty than before. Yeah, it is. It's
it's the opposite of of some other people who have
really experienced a crisis. As a results, she's like, well
I saw him British. Now I guess I should talk
more than before. So she sounds like a drunk cockney
chimney sweep pretty much. And she does sound cockney to me. Really,
(10:56):
I didn't hear I didn't see this one on YouTube,
so yeah, we should say. You know, this is kind
of like optical illusions. It's one thing to talk about it,
you need to actually go see and hear these people talking. Um.
If you just look up Lisa Alamia A l A
M I A and you will find plenty of interviews
with her. Um, she's she's, like you said, fairly recent.
(11:20):
There's one that's a quite a famous case, maybe the
most famous because it was the one that put foreign
accent syndrome on the map, even though it was before
the term was coined. Yeah, this one had had a
much darker turn, um because it was during World War Two.
A Norwegian woman named Astrid suffered injury. Um. And the
(11:40):
ironies here are really sad. She suffered a brain injury
from shrapnel from a German bomb and a bombing raid,
and then when she came to she had a German accent. Right,
very not fun for her, No, because the Germans were
occupying Norway at the time, right, so people she didn't
(12:00):
really know, we're like, oh, hey German spy, Yeah you
want some milk? No milk for you? Yeah, she was shunned. Um.
She couldn't even speak German, but she had that accent
and was obviously very distraught by this, and she went
to a neurologist. Name your Erman, Monrad Crohne. Nice job,
(12:23):
it's a great name. And um he coined the first
term uh for this, which is uh this prosody, which
is a prosody is like the tone and rhythm of
your speech, and the prefixed discs obviously is like abnormal
or ill um And that didn't catch on too well.
It didn't, but as we'll see, he kind of nailed
(12:45):
what the problem was because you know, the the the
non grammatical parts of speech, the prosody or what is affected.
When you have foreign accent syndrome. You you have what
appears to be a foreign accent, but you're usually your vocabulary,
your syntax, your grammar remains unchanged. It's all the little
(13:08):
nuances that make up your accent or your intonation or
the rhythm of your speech that are affected and has changed.
So this prosody is actually like the perfect name for
the syndrome. Yeah, but foreign accent syndrome is way more
catchy and that it's sexy in uh, neurologist named Harry
Whittaker came up with that um so A Whittaker coined
(13:30):
it in the eighties. Uh, I think two was when
he coined that official term, right, and he he was
a neuro linguist who did some pretty serious research into
foreign accent syndrome. He actually came up with a four
point criteria for diagnosing it. And the number one is
that the accent has to be considered by the patient,
(13:50):
the people the patient knows, and the researcher the doctor
to be to sound like a foreign accent, right for
pretty straightfor from what they are. Yeah, well that's number
number Two. It has to be different from the patient's
former prosody, noticeably different. Number three it has to be
(14:10):
related to central nervous system damage and this one has
come under fire under the last few years. And then
four it can't be related to a patient's ability to
speak a foreign language already. Right, So there's actually a condition,
it's astounding to me. It's called bilingual aphasia, or there's
also polyglott aphasia. And apparently if you suffer a stroke
(14:35):
or brain injury or some other trauma insult to your
central nervous system, and you know, more than one language.
You may completely lose the ability to speak one language
and completely retain the ability to speak the other. That's
how decentralized our language processes in the brain. Well, yeah,
(14:56):
because that's one of the factors in for UH accent
syndrome is you could it's not like UH in a
case where you might have a stroke and lose the
ability to speak like, you still can speak in perfect
dialect whatever that dialect is as far as being you know,
articulate and coherent. Oh right, right, yeah, yeah, so you're
you're yeah, exactly, You're not like slurring your speech. You
(15:20):
just sound different and like a foreign person saying the
same words would. Right, Oh, gotcha. Okay, So there's this
four point diagnosis criteria that's kind of been deconstructed over
the years. Um. But the problem with foreign accent syndrome it's,
like you said, Um, there's been a hundred, maybe a
hundred and fifty cases, So it's just totally up in
(15:43):
the air as to like how did diagnose it, what
qualifies as that? And we'll talk a little bit about
how scientists have dug into it thus far after this break,
(16:17):
so chuck forign accent syndrome. It's kind of all over
the place right now. Right You've got um Lisa Lamia
Um who woke up from jawl surgery with it. Apparently
people who have strokes can um can suffer from foreign
accent syndrome. Uh. And I actually saw one case where
(16:38):
your foreign accent syndrome and one patient who suffered a
stroke was cured by a second stroke elsewhere in the brain.
So we have like it's very tough to predict what's
going to happen when foreign accent syndrome does come about.
And you know, there's been people from Japan who developed
(16:59):
Korean act sense, or there have been people from Scotland
who developed South African accents. Um. It's it's kind of
everywhere and all over. Yeah, you can. One of the
other causes. It can be from the onset of MS
from multiple sclerosis. UM. This one woman that we'll talk
(17:19):
about in more details suffered from chronic migraines but had
a migraine attack so severe that it it's spurred this
and we'll get to her. But all of these in
a bucket from some sort of trauma or an event
are called uh neurogenic type. And for a long time
they used to think that was the only way that
(17:41):
you could get for an excellent syndrome, right, because I
remember that Harry Whittaker two criteria specifically says it has
to be related to central nervous system damage. Yeah. So
there's another kind called psychogenic, also non organic or functional
or psychosomatic. But um, one of the leading experts said
(18:02):
that they prefer psychogenic. Uh. He said because quote this
term has the advantage of stating positively based on an
exploration of its causes, that the disorder is a manifestation
of psychic psychological dis equilibrium like anxiety depression, personality disorder,
or conversion reaction in quote um, and you know we're
(18:23):
talking about could be bipolar disorder, it could be some
other form of mental illness. And UM, this really kind
of rocked. I mean, it's not a huge community studying this,
but the people that do are obviously super fascinated by it,
and it kind of rocked their world when they found
out that someone that had no head injury, no stroke,
(18:43):
or anything like that would could have something like this. Yeah.
So they developed UM first was neurogenic, then they developed psychogenic,
and then there's actually a third one now it's mixed.
So apparently it can actually be from a psychological issue
that possibly could arise from, say a brain lesion. So
it's both of them together working to create this foreign
(19:04):
accent syndrome and definitely psychogenic. The psychogenic version of foreign
accent syndrome differs tremendously from the neurogenic in a lot
of ways, and number one is the psychogenic tends to
clear up and accompanies say like a psychotic break or
a manic episode or something like that UM, And as
(19:26):
the episode wanes or goes away or clears up, so
too does the foreign accent syndrome. That is not the
case with neurogenic. With neurogenic, they have no cure whatsoever,
and basically the only treatment that they can come up
with is UM through speech therapy, where speech language pathologists
basically retrained you to talk the way you did before. Yeah,
(19:48):
it's also, uh, the neurogenic is also much more common
out of the cases I think it's about are from
some sort of neurological damage, right, So what does that
leave for to percent or unless I guess you're accounting
for the new super odd one that is could be both. Um.
One of the more famous cases that kind of demonstrated
(20:11):
that psychogenic f A S was an actual thing. UM
happened here in America. There's a woman in her mid
thirties who had a history of schizophrenia and her family
and she was brought to the e R after attacking
her mom's landlady. Yeah, this one's the most recent case actually,
and she um. She she believed the landlady was practicing
(20:32):
voodoo on her against her, and she attacked the woman.
UM and throughout all this, during this episode, she had
taken on a British accent and taking a family history,
they found that number one, she had schizophrenia or family
She was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a result of this incident,
but that she had had similar instances before and during
(20:52):
these she had spoken with the British accent. Yeah. I wonder,
I didn't see anything in there about her if she
like had a I mean that another personality. Is that
multiple personality disorder? I don't believe. So that's not what
I took from it, because that would make sense, you know,
if you have a just a British personality that came
out that's violent maybe or something. Yeah, well, I mean
(21:15):
we remember we I think we've done one on schizophrenia before,
haven't we. I don't know, haven't we. We definitely did
one on dissociative personality disorder UM, which was just absolutely fascinating.
But I was I like you, I kind of noticed, like, hey,
what about multiple personality? So it doesn't it seems like
something that would be right up that alley. I'm sure
(21:36):
they've looked into that, but apparently apparently that's not part
of it. Yeah. Um, another case that I said we
were going to get to those, This one is really
weird um and super sad. This woman named Sarah Calwill
in England. She is the one that had the migraine
that set it off. And uh, this one is super
(21:57):
odd because she's an English woman who now has a
Chinese accent. I mean just straight up sounds Chinese and
like broken English Chinese right right, So she sounds like
a native UM. I think Man Mandarin speaker is probably
(22:17):
what we're thinking of. Who um is speaking English? And
if you weren't looking like you would expect to see,
say maybe like a middle aged Chinese woman. Uh when
you looked at the at the video and no, it's
like I don't know, late late to mid thirties. Um,
Caucasian woman, native born English speaker. Who. Um, and she's
(22:43):
who I was thinking of when I was saying for
some people, is is a really big problem because it's
presented a big crisis for her identity. She said that
she can't look in the mirror while she's speaking any longer.
She just doesn't feel like herself anymore. It's really hit
her hard. Yeah, I mean she her case is really sad.
It was I think two thousand and ten when she
was diagnosed after this migraine incident and in um she
(23:10):
couldn't work anymore. Uh, and she she has she has
a lot and more issues going on than just the
speech with these uh migraines that have come on. She's
um got a whole range of physical problems that she's
had to stop work. She's in a wheelchair. Even though
her limbs completely work, her brain basically can't tell her
limbs to do what they should do. So um from migraines. Yeah,
(23:34):
from I think these really extreme migraines. I think they
even likened it to like having a stroke. They were
so severe. Um. So she's had to sell her house,
and I think her husband is afflicted with something too.
It's just a really really sad case. But um, you know,
you can there's all kinds of interviews with her, and
it's just so strange to hear that accent coming out
(23:56):
of uh, this white lady. It is from what I gather,
she'd be like, yeah, well, imagine how strange it feels
coming out of you. Oh yeah, you know. And you know,
I saw videos where they would sit down and play her.
Uh and before I looked up further that she was
having even more troubled times, it seemed like she was
getting a little better throughout the interview through therapy because
(24:18):
they were playing her. One of the things they do
is they play old recordings of herself and she would
sit down and listen to them and try and mimic it,
and um, which kind of brought up one of my
questions is can you even mimic an accent? Like you
know people can fake an accent, Like can you even
do that? Uh? And I didn't get an answer on that,
but um, then you're just mimicking an accent your entire
(24:43):
life too, even if you could you know. So that's
problematic on its own. But um, it seemed like she
was getting a little bit better in that interview, but
apparently not. It's really sad, Yeah it is. I mean,
like it's bad enough you've got migraines and then to
have a crisis of identity. Yeah, it's yeah, not fair.
So one of the other things it's, um really troubling
(25:03):
is you can't just just go to a neurologist and
get it cleared up. Um. They're a whole range of
doctors that you'll probably see along the way, including a neurologist.
Um you talked about a speech language pathologist. You might
go to a clinical psychologist to deal with the fallout
from everything. Uh, maybe a neuro psychologist, maybe a radiologist.
(25:27):
You might see you know, six and eight doctors and
still not get anywhere, right because I can't do a
lot for you. We don't know how to treat strokes
very well. And once damage has has occurred in the brain,
it can be pretty tough, if not impossible, to reverse
that damage. Right, it's permanently damaged. Um. So yeah, the
(25:52):
the idea that you're you've now gotten a foreign accent.
They're probably like, that's kind of the least of your words.
You just had a massive stroke or a huge head
injury or something like that. But what it's revealed to
them is not that there's this huge mystery, and we
we have kind of played into it a little bit
by not revealing this from the outset. But you you,
(26:14):
as a patient with foreign accent syndrome, it didn't hit
your head and wake up with the foreign accent. It's
all in the ear of the beholder. The whole idea
that there is a foreign accent syndrome is as the
way that it stated is false, and we'll talk about
that after this break. Okay, Chuck, we're back. So I
(27:00):
thought I heard you draw in a breath right before
we bro That might have been did you have something
to say? Yeah, I think I have a little trouble
wrapping my head around this whole idea that it's only
in the ear of the person, because if you know
that lady clearly has a Chinese accent, it's not oh,
(27:20):
I'm just hearing it that way. So they've actually been
studies where they've played a video clip of her, audio
clip of a person with foreign accent syndrome to different
people and said, you know, where do you think this
person is from? And the same person will get tens
of different answers out of tens of different people. Yeah,
(27:43):
I don't know. I mean that makes sense in some cases,
I think, But I don't see how anyone could hear
this woman and say she sounds British to me, right, well, no, no, no,
she she definitely doesn't sound Bridge. But that's the point.
She sounds Chinese, but she's not actually speaking in a
Chinese accent. She didn't hit her head and wake up
with a Chinese accent. What happened was she got these
(28:06):
series of migraines, probably had some sort of stroke, and
a region of her brain that controls the really intricate
process of prosody, of making your tongue do certain things
to intonate an accent, certain words in certain ways that
make up your accent and your dialect. Overall that got damaged,
(28:28):
and so now she can't control it in the way
she used to before. It comes out sounding differently. And
to you, somebody who has heard people speak in a
Chinese accent before, it sounds like a Chinese accent. That's
the difference. Yeah, so they don't get that. What I
do get though, is we take second nature just when
we open our mouth we talk. We don't realize the
(28:49):
complex series of events that's going on to make your
voice come out the way it does. So you know
you're you're well in the brain, they think, um, and
again the mysteries of the brain, they're there. What how
you create speeches really complex and involves all kind of
areas of the brain, but UH specifically damaged in the
(29:10):
left hemisphere and the cerebral artery they know a lot
of times can cause foreign accent syndrome. But when you're speaking,
you're using your tongue, you're using your lips, your jaw, uh,
your larynx, and the way all these things combine and
who you are UH is gonna make you have and
we should do one on accents period. But um, it's
(29:32):
gonna control how your speech comes out. So and the
you know, the one example they use in here is
if you know you have a little too much to
drink those you know, you might lose some of that
muscle control and you might slow your words or talk
funny or differently. So that's a pretty pretty basic way
of understanding it. But um, I know, vowels are are
(29:55):
sort of a big deal when it comes to foreign
accent syndrome. Yeah, if you if you say ad and
stay a um, or you substitute consonants like R for L. Right,
so you're um, you know, uh, what's that? What were
they singing jingle bells on? Um? Oh? No? Deck the
(30:17):
halls on a Christmas story? Ra. Right. So if you
were a Caucasian English speaker and that you damaged your
brain in a way that the the part of your
brain responsible for forming l's now formed ours instead. To
other English speakers who had heard um native Chinese speakers,
(30:40):
you would sound like you had a Chinese accent, because
that's what people who speak Chinese do when they're speaking English.
So you didn't actually adopt a Chinese accent. You're just
creating sounds in the same way that somebody who was
a native Chinese speaker would. Yeah, I mean, I see
what they're getting at with all this. To me, it's
(31:02):
a little bit splitting hairs. I think that's what I'm
trying to say. I think the difference is this chuck
with your your accent, your native accent, your native dialect
is the result of your exposure to your environment right lifelong,
all the people around you, all the stuff you've learned,
all the things you've heard. It creates your dialect. Right
(31:25):
when you suffer foreign accent syndrome, your dialect, your brain
is damage so that you can't produce that anymore, and
you just kind of haphazardly producing something else you don't
actually follow. So, like if you took uh Sarah cal
Calwill's language and had her read a passage from a book,
(31:48):
and then you had a native Chinese speaker, typical accented
Mandarin speaker read that same passage, it would not be
the exact same thing. There'd be all sorts of derivations
and deviations from that normal Mandarin accent because Sarah Colwell's
brain was damaged in a certain way that makes it
a totally unique accent. Yeah, I get that, but that
(32:12):
happens within the Mandarin accent between people too. You're not
letting this one. Just don't get it. One thing I
do get is that there's no like. And this is
probably what's so frustrating, or one of the things so
frustrating is it's not like they wake up with a
new cultural identity either, I mean, this woman still wants
(32:32):
to have her tea and biscuits every afternoon, but when
she says that, she says it with Chuck would call
it a Chinese accent. A neurologist would say, well, you're
just hearing that right, Uh So you know, it's like
you said, people suffer a bit from uh their own
like sense of self, you know, because see here's what
(32:56):
I wonder, isn't in there Do they hear it in
their head as their own regular accent? I don't think so. No.
I think it sounds off to them, and I think
it's probably distressing because they're like, wait, let me say
that again, and they still say it the what they
perceive is the wrong way, because apparently one of the
hallmarks of for an accent syndrome is the errors or
(33:18):
the differences that they make, uh pro in their prosody
is predictable, which makes it like an accent. I mean,
that's what an accent as is. You're going to drop
your ta s or replace the T with the th,
h with the D just about every time I add
that are when you say wash um yeah exactly, Like
(33:39):
that's it's a predictable thing, and that's part of foreign
accent syndroma. It starts to happen in predictable ways too,
so I would guess, yeah, it sounds off to them
as well well. Because the reason I say that is
because when um, like, and I think I've talked about this,
when my grandfather had a stroke, he still talked, but
it just came as gibberish. But in his head he
(34:02):
was saying the things that he was trying to say,
which is, you know, one of the most frustrating things
I think after a stroke victim is I remember seeing
him talk and getting so frustrated. He would just you know,
say things out loud and it would come out as
gibberish to us, but in his head he's still saying,
you know, his English words, they's gotta make you feel
(34:23):
trapped in your body. Yeah. Um. However, f A S
is a little all over the map because there have
been other weird cases. Because we've been saying this whole time,
there's not un new identity. It's the same, Uh, You're
saying the same words and everything. But there have been
cases where people do substitute outwards, like you would say
(34:46):
lift instead of an elevator, right, That's like the psychogenic version.
I know, it's just so confusing. Well it almost makes
me think, like, so before there was nothing but neurogenic
foreign accent syndrome, right, everything else was you're just crazy.
Now they they recognize that they're psychogenic f A S
(35:06):
as well. I think what's gonna happen with more and
more study, They're gonna just diverge into two totally different syndromes. Now, Yeah,
that makes sense, you know. I think they're gonna be like,
that's actually not the same thing. That's something totally different.
Neurogenic for an extent syndrome is its own thing, and
psychogenic is is something else entirely. I'll just make up
(35:27):
a new name. Yeah. Uh. This one other case I
thought was interesting about the Dutch woman, which one she
was Dutch is Dutch and she developed a French accent,
but she spoke Dutch using French syntax and occasionally for
in French words as if she was a French person
(35:50):
learning Dutch. And it turns out that she was a
Dutch language teacher who taught French people to speak Dutch.
And I don't know it's her psychogenic or neurogenic. It
would have to be psychogenic because neurogenic has basically that
original um Harry Whittaker criteria use different words and things. Well,
(36:13):
well it was it has to not be related to
the patient's ability to speak a foreign language. So like
that she would be technically canceled out from neurogenic for
that one, and um it would also it didn't have
anything to do with with central nervous system damage, which
is again that's why I think it's gonna end up
(36:33):
being its own thing. Man. So interesting it is? Uh,
that's all I've got. Man, isn't that enough? Man? Any
language stuff? Anytime we talk about language in the brain,
I guess neural linguistics. I just turned to Google. It's
so interesting to me. Yeah, that's what happens when something
(36:55):
interests me. I turned to Google. If you want to
turn to Goo and learn are about foreign accent syndrome.
You can type those words in the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And since I said that,
it's time for Chuck administrated details. How was that? That
(37:16):
was great? Man? So Chuck, Yes, we've got some more
people to thank for sending us some nice stuff. That's right.
I'm gonna start off with Nathan for latso Uh, he's
sent some really lovely hand drawn calendars and bookmarks. Um.
And you can find those at Wildlife dot Wildlife dot
(37:38):
Marini for Latso dot com dot au. And that's M
A R I and I F E R l A
z z O dot com dot Au. And um, it
was really really beautiful work and it's it's a cool
thing because a portion of every sale is donated to
a nonprofit wildlife organization. Very nice. I think you handle
(38:00):
at Foreign Accent very well. Thank you. Um. I want
to say thanks big time to Robert Combs or Combs
from White Tail Coffee for the amazing coffees. Um, especially
like seriously, it's a really good coffee, especially the Ladaris
and Lamarella. Um. And that's white Tail t A L E. Coffee. Uh.
(38:23):
It's just an amazing coffee subscription service that you should
check out. Uh. I got a couple of more coffees.
I'll just knock them both out. You have one sitting,
actually have two of them sitting on your desk right now,
my friend, wait to grab them. True Stone Coffee Roasters
from St. Paul, Minnesota, Sin. It's their medium blend and
I can't vouch for the taste yet because it just
got here, but it smells good. And then devon from
(38:45):
True Coffee Roasters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, Sinus uh dark roasted
Sumatra and in Mexico Alutra. I'm sorry, altera nice, thanks
a lot coffee coming out our ears. It's great. That's
a good place to be. But we're not gonna have diabetes.
My friend now, Doug Fuchs, sent us a beautiful illustrated card.
(39:08):
Thanks for that dog, Thanks for saying hi. Meg from Seattle,
she sent me a card about Lauren's passing my cat
which I lost last year, which is very very sweet.
And while I'm on that, um Buckley, my old boy
passed away a couple of weeks ago, and um, everyone
on Facebook was beyond supportive and sweet and that really
(39:30):
helped out. So thanks for that. Yeah, from everybody listening
to you, Chuck, we send our condolences. Thank you. It
was very dark time. Um. Let's see Preston Pope. He
sent us some amazing chocolates Chuck from the Chocolates V.
Just the letter v Chocolates dot Com. Uh, seriously, it's
(39:51):
good stuff. I feel bad. I feel like I'm running around.
I'm a little bit sweets that's okay, that we'll always
come back to them, okay, Uh buddy, Jeff Barney was
kind enough, and I still haven't tried it's in my fridge,
but you said it's the best. He sent us QP
Japanese mayo. Oh it's so good because of my love
(40:12):
for mayonnaise, and um, chuck, you may never go back
to American mayo again. Well, I'm finishing up a gallon
of dukes this afternoon. Yeah, I'm just gonna gonna shoot
it down and then I'm gonna dive into the QP
and see what's going on there. I gotta see what
the difference is. It's subtle, but do you You'll notice,
(40:34):
You'll say, wow, this is actually really really good mayonnaise.
All right, Well, thanks Jeff Barney for that. Um. Thanks
a lot to Tim and Joe from Primer Stories. I
don't know if you remember, but our animal rights double
parter tied into an essay I wrote, um Primer Stories
dot com and they sent t shirts to say thanks
(40:54):
for that. So thanks back for you guys. Support. Ian
Newton of the Baltimore Ski Company send us some ginger
Apple liqueur and gin. Yes, thanks a lot. Uh, Don Kent,
who last gave us some Pliny the Elder before, which
was nice, also sent us a bunch of soilent, and
(41:16):
thank you also to Soilent itself, the company who heard
our soiling episode and said, you guys haven't tried soilent. Here,
here's some soilent, and thank you for that soilent. That
was very nice. I think they got what they wanted
out of this, which is for us to say soilent
twelve times soilent. Uh. This came in today Thomas Craig
ol car k R E g L. He sent me
(41:39):
a frigging monocle. Oh that's neat. And he heard me
talking about my eyes going and how I just need
him to read things close up. And he said, buddy,
here's what you need to do because you will one
day embarrass your daughter like I embarrassed my children. You
need to rock a monocle. And it's a monocle. So
(41:59):
is he like a trained optometrist who can like no, no,
So he just gave you a piece of glass that's
gonna ruin your eye over time. Yeah, I mean I
tried it and it's you know, it's kind of like
a reader. It works about the same as my prescription,
but he uses one. He sent a little picture of
himself and uh, I guess I should plug the company.
(42:21):
It's near sites. Monocles is what he used. And UM, yeah,
I got a monocle now, job, I'm gonna use it.
Your new nickname is Pringles Guy. Okay, I've got someone else,
Pringles Guy. Janelle Samara send us a copy of her
book Our Only Hope, Thank you and congratulations on writing
(42:41):
a book. Bridget mass Off in a S. S O. T. H.
Send it's some really cute along with an extra large
handwritten note s and it's some really cute Josh and
Chuck cutouts, like kind of paper cutting paste cutouts, and
yours is on your desk. Thank you. We gotta get
out of this room and over to your desk. You
got a bounty, uh, Francis Della Pause. So you know,
(43:05):
there's like a whole group of people out there who
believe in writing letters, beautiful letters with fountain pens and
all that, and Francis Della Pause is one of them.
Sent us a beautiful handwritten letter. And you also apparently
customarily send what's called the flat gift. And they sent
a postcard the Sad Life of Sad clown which is great.
(43:28):
Sad clowns are great. Well, I got a few letters. Actually,
I'll just knock those out because Sandra maybe this was
because of International Correspondence Writing Month, Uh that we got
these because apparently that happened. But Sandra sent us a
nice handwritten letter and honor that specifically. And then Austin
from Bakersfield sent us a very nice handwritten note. And
(43:49):
then Kristen Cook sent us a Valentine State card to
all of us, including Harry Noel that Harry Knowles of
ain't it cool? New is? But our own Nuel who
was just paring. We got some other ones to chuck.
We got a lighthouse postcard from Big Sable Point from Teresa. Um,
(44:09):
we got a couple of Christmas cards from the Johnson
Alaman family and Test Sullivan and her family. Uh. And
I guess in part because the national what is it
National Writing Month or letter writing month? International Correspondence Writing month? Exactly.
Noel Verosa, no sorry, Noel veris Soza, Noel Veri Zosa.
(44:32):
It's hand written. You can't you know? I got it
that last time, Noel Noel Veri Zosa wrote us a
nice hand letter, handwritten letter in fountain pen. I've got
two more. Um, Megan Moon Waltzman. That's Megan with two g's. Oddly,
she sent us a copy of this really cool thing
she made. It's a book. It's called Songbook, a book
(44:54):
of music for all levels, all ages, and it is
eleven songs, uh, kind of written out as chords and
things and illustrated for different instruments, like there'll be a
song for guitar, an intro song for banjo, one for cello,
and it's got these cool pictures and then you can
download these songs and kind of figure it's I mean,
it says for all ages, but it seems like it'd
(45:15):
be great to give a kid, right, So check that out.
It's very worthwhile. Um, I've got two more to finish
than two. One. Austin Doyle sent me an amazing oil
craned painting um, which I assume will inflate and value
very rapidly once Austin dies. Hopefully doesn't doesn't happen, because
(45:35):
Doyle is one of our oldest uh and I don't
mean by age, but one of our longest time listeners. Yeah,
he's a great guy. I mean like when he dies
of old age, I just plan to outlive him. That's okay,
so I can catch in on the painting he made me. Uh.
And then Ben and Aaron Gibson sent us the Japanese
car magnets that signify an elderly driver or a team driver,
(45:57):
which we've talked about before. Oh yeah, yeah, I remember this, dudes.
I got one more and this one. Well, you have
no idea what's waiting in there. You just came right
into the recording studio for a change. Um on your
desk right now, Josh, I can't wait. You have a
handmade cutting board. Awesome, and it's really really nice. It's
from Christopher at the Timbered Wolf, and um, it's just
(46:21):
you know, it's gorgeous. He sent a couple of these
in and they're really really nice. Nice. So you gotta
you gotta take care of it Though'll left the instructions
for you. I got a lot of stuff to carry
out of here. Yeah, you need a someone needs to
send Josh a wheelbarrow or a radio flyer. Who I
got one of those for my kid. It's nice. Oh yeah, yeah,
the old red wagon like the real one. The radio flyer. Yeah,
(46:42):
they still make them nice. Well, thank you again to
everybody who's sent us so much great stuff. We appreciate
it big time. Uh and UH. If you want to
get in touch with us, you can tweet to us.
I'm at josh Um Clark and s Y s K podcast,
Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Stuff. He's you
know on Facebook, and you can send us both in
(47:02):
emails to stuff podcasts at how stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this
and thousands of other topics because at how stuff Works
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