| funny or what........
A Geordie woman has emerged from a stroke speaking with a Jamaican accent. (Pic: icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk)
Linda Walker, a 60-year-old former university administrator, had suffered a stroke but came round in hospital to discover her distinctive accent had disappeared.
She is said to have a rare case of Foreign Accent Syndrome, where patients wake up speaking differently after suffering brain injury.
She told the Evening Chronicle: "I got very down about it at first. It is so strange because you don't feel like the same person. Not only did I have a stroke but I got lumbered with this foreign accent syndrome as well.
"I didn't realise what I sounded like but then my speech therapist played a tape of me talking. I was just devastated."
Researchers at Oxford University have found that patients with Foreign Accent Syndrome have suffered damage to tiny areas of the brain that affect speech.
The result is often a drawing out or clipping of the vowels that mimic the accent of a particular country, such as Spain or France, even though the sufferer has limited exposure to that accent.
The syndrome was first identified during the Second World War when a Norwegian woman suffered shrapnel damage to her brain. She developed a strong German accent, which led to her being ostracised by her community.
How strange is that?  | 
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