Refs. 101(B), 333(a) & 907 MEDICAL CURIOSITIES. FOREIGN ACCENT SYNDROME. CANUCK AFTER FALL. A Canadian woman who fell off a horse and woke up with a Scottish accent is still speaking with a tartan twang five years later. Sharon Campbell-Rayment who had never even been to Scotland before the accident is now writing a book about her experience. (The Sunday Post [Scotland], 5/1/14) INVERNESS Canadian Sharon Campbell-Rayment never expected to solve a personal mystery when she called a bed & breakfast in the Scottish Highlands to book a room and ask for directions. “Surely darlin’ you’ll know how to get here,” said the woman on the line, in a voice just like hers. “Your accent tells me you’re from Inverness.” Ms. Campbell-Rayment had never been to Scotland, where her daughter was attending school, let alone that particular city. She only assumed a Scottish accent two months after a nasty fall off her horse temporarily robbed her of speech. Suddenly, the mother of two sounded nothing like her old self. She sounded like Mrs. Doubtfire. Though her ancestors are Scottish, she’d never met a relation who spoke with the same r-rolling brogue that has leapt off her tongue for the past five years. And she didn’t know her new accent was from the Highlands — a detail the B&B owner helped her iron out. “It’s a bit [interesting] when you go out and meet people and they ask ‘Where are you from?’ And you kind of go ‘Oh Lord, what will I say to these people?” she said by phone Wednesday from her horse farm near Windsor, Ont. “My children would get this look of horror when people would ask. You can’t explain it in a couple of moments.” Her case was first made public in 2010, but Ms. Campbell-Rayment said she has spent the following years studying both the condition and Scotland, and has learned a lot about who she has become. Ms. Campbell-Rayment has foreign accent syndrome — a neurological condition that can cause sufferers of concussion, migraines or stroke to speak as if they’re from a totally different country. At most, a few hundred people have it: A woman in Britain, who had never left her home country wakes up after a bad migraine with a Chinese accent. An American woman speaks like a Briton after a stroke, despite never visiting the country. Where you come from [and] what other languages you speak have nothing to do with the accent you seem to develop . The first accounts date back to 1907 when French neurologist Pierre Marie documented a case in which a Parisian began speaking like a person from Alsace. “Where you come from [and] what other languages you speak have nothing to do with the accent you seem to develop,” Nicholas Miller, a researcher who studies this condition at Newcastle University in Britain, wrote in an email to the Post Wednesday. The only thing Ms. Campbell-Rayment remembers from July 11, 2008, was her hat flying off her head in the moment before falling off her horse, Malachi. She hit the back of her head on the ground, hard. Then she sat up and fell back again. “I had had this bruising from all this bouncing in the brain, but the most affected part was the left frontal lobe, which is the executive functioning area — decision-making, problem-solving, multi-tasking, all of these things I was really great at previously,” she said. That section of the brain also controls speech. She lost all speech 10 days after her fall. By October, under the care of a speech therapist, she got it back — but with that unfamiliar brogue and a few words she never used to say — “wee,” “lovely” and “nevertheless.” “There’s always going to be people who say ‘Oh, she’s faking it,’ or ‘I’ve heard her roll her r’s before,” said Ms. Campbell-Rayment, who is working on a book about her experience. “You know what? It’s there. I don’t know what else to do. If you want to come live with me 24/7, my husband will tell you ‘Yeah, it’s there.’ ’’ The accident brought other changes to Ms. Campbell-Rayment’s life. No longer an “A-type” personality, she’s introspective and calm and still suffers dizziness, fatigue and has trouble in crowds. Ms. Campbell-Rayment even transformed her horse farm into a therapeutic practice in which she offers coping tips to others who’ve suffered concussion. On that trip to Scotland, she did have moments of insecurity about her accent — ‘‘[I tried to] keep it as low key as I can, because ‘Jeez, what are they thinking?’’’ — but it ultimately played a therapeutic role. On a visit to a church on the island of Iona, she burst into tears of relief. “I felt really and awfully like I’d returned home.” (National Post [Canada], 8/1/14)
Posted on: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 15:19:13 +0000
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