Incredible facts
Sarah Colwill, a 38-year-old British woman from Plymouth, suffered a severe migraine attack, after which she woke up with a Chinese accent.
The incident happened to a woman on March 7, 2010, when she suddenly found herself speaking not with her usual Plymouth accent, but with an unknown Chinese accent.
As it turns out, Sarah was one of the rare people diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome. From 1941 to 2012, only 61 such cases were reported.
Foreign accent syndrome
Foreign accent syndrome is a disorder that causes drastic changes in speech, making it appear as if a native speaker is speaking with a foreign accent. As a rule, the coherence, intonation and position of the language change.
According to the University of Texas at Dallas, there have been cases where the pronunciation has changed from Japanese to Korean, from British English to French, and from American English to British English and from Spanish to Hungarian.
There is currently no cure for this syndrome, but the woman is trying to find a way to return to her normal accent.
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According to Sarah, people mistake her for a foreigner and try to guess where she came from, despite the fact that the woman has spent her whole life in her hometown.
Doctors believe that the reason for her foreign pronunciation is migraines, which could lead to brain damage. The patient herself experiences up to 10 migraine attacks per month.
Migraine: symptoms and treatments
Migraine is a severe throbbing pain in one half of the head that is often accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and increased sensitivity to light and sound.
Migraine symptoms:
– moderate or severe pain on one side of the head
– throbbing headache
– increased pain during physical activity
– inability to perform normal activities due to pain
– nausea
– vomiting
-hypersensitivity to light and sounds
Many people experience migraines with aura before or after the onset of a headache. Aura is a perception disorder characterized by such manifestations as confusion, blurred vision, perception of various shapes, bright spots and flashes of light, tingling in the limbs, speech difficulties.
When treating migraines, analgesics (paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin), antidepressants, ergot drugs and other drugs are usually used.
Non-drugs include good sleep, physical activity, vitamins (coenzyme Q 10, riboflavin, B 12) and herbal remedies (butterbur, pyrethrum for girls), visualization and self-hypnosis, acupuncture and others.