Foreign Accent Syndrome
Southern Ontario woman gets Newfoundland accent after stroke, researchers say
Thu Jul 3, 3:28 PM
By The Canadian Press
TORONTO - A southern Ontario woman who suffered a serious stroke two years ago is also experiencing a rare medical mystery, one that researchers say causes her to sound like a Newfoundlander.
Rose Dore had a stroke in 2006, triggering a phenomenon known as foreign-accent syndrome. When the 52-year-old checked herself into a Hamilton, Ont., hospital, staff assumed she was from the East Coast.
It wasn't until her family arrived and heard Dore speak that health-care workers realized they had a special case on their hands. Staff then contacted speech specialists who mapped Dore's language patterns and concluded she was experiencing foreign-accent syndrome.
A new report, published in the July issue of the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, found that although Dore's accent isn't identical to that of a Newfoundlander there are striking similarities.
Principle investigator Karin Humphreys of McMaster University said family members noticed specific changes in Dore's speech.
"Instead of saying 'that' and 'this' she was saying 'dat' and 'diss' at least some of the time. So the 'ths' were turning into 'ds' and 'ts' and her vowels were really changing so they were getting really elongated," said Humphreys.
"She was saying things like 'doog' (instead of dog)."
Researchers took recordings of Dore's speech and matched them with known features of a Newfoundlander's accent.
It provided a "pretty good match," said Alexandre Sevigny, one of the study's co-authors.
In an interview published Wednesday, Dore, who deals with paralysis from her stroke and now lives in Windsor, Ont., said she feels lucky, regardless of her new accent.
Dore wasn't immediately available for comment Thursday.
Considering the sometimes catastrophic affects of strokes, including complete loss of speech, Humphreys said Dore's new accent "is actually a very good outcome language-wise."
Her speech sounds completely normal. Nobody thinks that she sounds disordered at all, like she's had a stroke," she said. "It just sounds a bit different."
There are 50,000 strokes in Canada every year, with Dore's case the first confirmed case of foreign-accent syndrome, Sevigny said.
There are only 20 known cases worldwide, with each having been confirmed by brain scans, she added.
