While a Texas mom may not spend a lot of time eating chip buttys or tweed kettle pie, what has been coming out of her mouth is suddenly very, very English.
According to a report from a local Houston TV station, Texas native Lisa Alamia recently underwent a jaw surgery that not only changed her overbite, it also gave her a British accent. Specifically, English commenters have said online , Alamia’s new accent sounds as if it comes from Lancashire, a county in the northwest of England that the Texas mother of three is not known to have ever visited.
“People who don’t know me, they’re like, ‘Hey, where are you from?'” Alamia told KHOU. “I’m from Rosenberg. They’re like, ‘Where is that?’ I’m like, ‘Right here in Rosenberg.’ ‘Oh, you’re from here? How do you talk like that?’ So that’s where the whole story comes up.”
Switching accents out of the blue
Alamia’s oldest daughter Kayla said she thought her mother was joking with her at first.
“But then she showed me that the doctor diagnosed her with foreign accent syndrome,” Kayla said. “Then I was like, ‘Oh, Lord.’”
Foreign Accent Syndrome is speech dysfunction that causes an abrupt change to speech such that the speaker is recognized as speaking with a ‘foreign’ accent. The condition is frequently brought on by damage to the brain, possibly by a stroke or traumatic injury. In some instances, no clear cause has been recognized.
Speech may be changed in with respect to of pacing, inflection, and tongue positioning, so that is regarded as sounding foreign. Listeners can still comprehend the sufferer’s speech; it does not sound disordered or nonsensical
Foreign Accent Syndrome has been recorded in cases around the planet, including accent shifts from Japanese to Korean and British to French. There have only ever been 150 known instances of Foreign Accent Syndrome thus far. In some cases, the accent has faded over time, and in other cases the switch was permanent.
Lisa Alamia said she plans to undergo speech therapy in an attempt to get back her normal American accent.
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Image credit: KHOU
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