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Foreign accent syndrome | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| simonuk Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5352 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai | Message 1 of 2 20 April 2010 at 1:59pm | IP Logged |
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Listening to the radio today i caught the tale end of a story in which a lady suffered from what she thought was an intense migrane on to then find that her accent had changed from South west English to chinese! Her voice is now unrecognisable to those that knew her previously. Only approx 20 people in the world share this syndrome.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Strange-News/Foreign-Accent -Syndrome-May-Be-The-Reason-Why-Sarah-Colwill-Now-Speaks-Wit h-Chinese-Accent/Article/201004315609647?f=rss I know we shouldnt mock the afflicted but she really shouldnt waste this opportunity to learn Mandarin , every cloud has a silver lining right ? ( awaiting the comments from those that dont appreciate tongue in cheek humour) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 2 20 April 2010 at 2:33pm | IP Logged |
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Not wanted to sound humourless, but it certainly doesn't help the language learner.
As the article says, it's not a single, clear cut condition, but a major component of many cases of FAS is (as I understand it) the loss of fine motor control, which is a common component of most classes of stroke anyway. It therefore isn't a matter of gaining the ability to produce new sounds, but rather losing the ability to produce the old ones. The similarities to a particular foreign accent are really only superficial, and it only appears that way by comparison to other native speakers of the language, because we primarily notice differences in accent, not similarities. It is not that her accent is similar to a Chinese or Eastern European accent, it's that the differences between her old accent and her new accent are similar to the differences between her old accent and an immigrant's accent. In this particular case, it may be more than just the physical, but notice how the missing sounds are the ones that foreigner learners of English have problems with -- Rs and the suffices -s and -ed after consonant sounds. Foreign accent syndrome probably makes it a lot more difficult to learn a language. Edited by Cainntear on 20 April 2010 at 2:37pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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