"Foreign accent syndrome"

[excreationist]

From 60 Minutes Australia:

I thought this was really weird -

....One day they felt sick, the next they were jabbering away with thick foreign accents. One can now pass for Russian. Another has developed a French lilt. The third sounds Chinese. It's called Foreign Accent Syndrome and it's a condition that's as rare as it is strange...

 

[bilby]

It's junk science; FAS sufferers have brain damage that makes them sound 'foreign' to their family and friends, but they don't actually have a specific foreign accent.

Also, "People with brain damage sound like Americans" is hardly a great surprise.

 

[excreationist]

It's junk science; FAS sufferers have brain damage that makes them sound 'foreign' to their family and friends, but they don't actually have a specific foreign accent...

Yes that's what the doctor from Newcastle University is saying but their accent is changed in many ways to be quite like real foreign accents - for the one that sounds Asian she'd say (9:20) "you do" and "you coffee" which sounds kind of Asian to me - e.g. "what you like" and "and then" from "Dude Where's My Car":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqwzuiSy9y0

Also, "People with brain damage sound like Americans" is hardly a great surprise.

I don't remember that being in the video.

 

[bilby]

It's junk science; FAS sufferers have brain damage that makes them sound 'foreign' to their family and friends, but they don't actually have a specific foreign accent...

Yes that's what the doctor from Newcastle Unversity is saying but their accent is changed in many ways to be quite like real foreign accents - for the one that sounds Asian she'd say (9:20) "you do" and "you coffee" which sounds kind of Asian to me - e.g. "what you like" and "and then" from "Dude Where's My Car":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqwzuiSy9y0

Also, "People with brain damage sound like Americans" is hardly a great surprise.

I don't remember that being in the video.

I haven't watched the video. I was commenting on the syndrome - 60 Minutes is far from the best, and certainly not the only, source of information on this, or any, subject.

 

[excreationist]

I haven't watched the video.

Well in the video you can hear for yourself what it is like. Also the summary I quoted included "One can now pass for Russian. Another has developed a French lilt. The third sounds Chinese" - I'm not sure how you got American out of that...

I was commenting on the syndrome - 60 Minutes is far from the best, and certainly not the only, source of information on this, or any, subject.

Well they showed three cases (even though it is a very rare syndrome) and got a doctor to talk about it that would go against your idea that it is "junk science". You just assumed that 60 minutes would take the "junk science" view.

 

[excreationist]

bilby:
Unfortunately I can't find the transcript but you could play back the video at double speed or do what I often do - have the video playing while reading something else in another window.

 

[steve_bank]

It is called acting.

But there was a case. Years back Tina Turner stared talking with a Jamaican accent.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Anyone remember the old 'cattle mutilation' scares of a few years back?
Cattle were found in the desert, dead, their organs removed 'with surgical precision.'
People were talking about demons, alien visitors, other shit...

Until someone went and filmed a dead cow in the desert. The body bloats, and the organs swell up, and stick out the cow's anus. Scavengers eat all the soft tissue and then the swelling goes down. The bite marks shrink until they're barely noticeable.

Thing is, all the people that used the term 'with surgical precision' were not surgeons. When actual surgeons examined the wounds, they could point out 'No, see, a scalpel cut looks like this...'

Whether or not You or I think they sound French or American or Cantonese is meaningless. Does a Linguist actually say 'This man now has a French accent.'?

Like every American who has been in England for more than an hour THINKS they can do a Cockney Accent. But anyone who grew up listening to it, like say a Londoner, instantly recognizes that they're Canadians.

 

[Underseer]

[ent]hellip[/ent]

Like every American who has been in England for more than an hour THINKS they can do a Cockney Accent. But anyone who grew up listening to it, like say a Londoner, instantly recognizes that they're Canadians.

On a related note: if you need to extort a British person, I find that it is very effective to threaten to say "bugger" in an exaggerated American accent. They'll agree to almost anything after that.

 

[barbos]

"French" accent woman have accent only on some words which have french origin such as "impossible" for example.
"Russian" one have "slavic" accent more less uniformly and she has more just an accent she really has bad grammar it seems.
I remember cases where people forgot their native language and started speaking foreign ones. British guy started speaking french after being hit in the head or something.

 

[Gun Nut]

I can't see the video but I get the gist from what ya'll were saying.

I literally just met (like last weekend) a bartender at a brewpub. This guy has the most interesting accent. He sounded Norse.. like ancient Norse.... right out of a Highlander movie or something... his appearance was out of a heavy metal video too... I asked him where he was from and he said, "Idaho". In response to my blank expression, he said, "yor auskin on me ahssent, ya?". I nodded. He told me that he had a brain injury as a very young kid that affected his hearing and other things and this is just how he always talked... and people have been asking him where he's from all his life.