Here’s a Brisbane woman whose accent changed from Australian to Irish after her tonsils were removed. This phenomenon is called “foreign accent syndrome” and, as Wikipedia says,
Foreign accent syndrome usually results from a stroke, but can also develop from head trauma, migraines or developmental problems. The condition might occur due to lesions in the speech production network of the brain, or may also be considered a neuropsychiatric condition. The condition was first reported in 1907, and between 1941 and 2009 there were 62 recorded cases.
Its symptoms result from distorted articulatory planning and coordination processes and although popular news articles commonly attempt to identify the closest regional accent, speakers suffering from foreign accent syndrome acquire neither a specific foreign accent nor any additional fluency in a foreign language. There has been no verified case where a patient’s foreign language skills have improved after a brain injury.
Since this involved only the removal of tonsils, it must be either “neuropsychiatric”, or have something to do with the change in her tonsils. Don’t ask me: I’m not a doctor (I just play one in academica).
When you’re so afflicted, you don’t speak a different language, of course, but your accent resembles that of someone from another land speaking your language. And it occurs in languages other than English. It’s usually temporary, but can be persistent, and it’s hard to fix, with retraining in your native accent the usual means of “cure.” You can read about it in various papers here.
As far as accents go, Irish isn’t bad. It could have been worse, Southern US or Boston.
Pittsburgh
If I get my tonsils removed, can I gain a Glaswegian accent?
You don’t need to remove them – just marinade them in a decoction of stale chip fat and cheap whiskey for 6 hours a day.
Can do!
I don’t think I have any ancestors I can trace back to Glasgow but I can trace my great grandmother’s line to Killiecrankie specifically, and other areas of Scotland. I’m more than half Scottish and generally half in the bag every day anyway.
Well, the marinading is reversible, so it’s hardly a leap of faith.
No, sorry, I’m getting confused with Leum Uilleim, just up the way from Killiecrankie.
Killie was famous for something else in a Jacobite marching song, but it’s slipping my memory now.
Be careful what you wish for…
That is very strange! A speech coach might train actors in how to speak in a certain accent in terms of placing your soft palette or tongue in a certain place, and maybe the regional trauma did something like that.
Its’ easy to explain the temporary Darth Vader accent that one gets while recovering from a bad cold or something similar.
My maternal grandmother had a distinct Irish accent, although she was born in Hungary and came to
the US when young. In her case, her accent was ascribed to inhabiting an Irish neighborhood in NYC for a long time, rather than surgery.
On the other hand, consider the case of Arthur Koestler, a writer I have long admired. He was both fluent in and a brilliant writer in Hungarian, German, French, and English (and also at least competent
in Hebrew, Russian, and maybe Spanish). But when I once saw him speak on TV, in the English
language of which he was a prose master on paper, his Hungarian accent was so thick that he was barely understandable.
Accents are fun except when they are really thick and you have a hard time understanding what one says.
After a Novocain injection for dental work I’ll speak with a Russian accent for an hour or so
…which leads me to believe that if Russian immigrants injected their gums with some sort of stimulant they could speak without an accent for a while
I don’t think the tonsillectomy causes you to speak with an Irish accent, it just upgrades whatever accent you have. So if you’re from Texas you’ll have an Oklahoma accent. If you have a cockney accent you’ll acquire a Cornwall accent and if you have a Queens (NYC) accent you’ll acquire an Upper West Side accent
I think she only sounds as if she has an Irish accent to Australians who have not spent much time in Ireland or around Irish folk.
My Dad was very self conscious about the deep Appalachian accent he grew up with, so he worked diligently to suppress it before he entered university. He left school with a completely neutral accent. Of course he found himself in USAF Flight test, where the popular thing was to affect a West Virginia accent. He stayed neutral, so his voice is distinctive on the mission tapes.
I agree with what you say. She doesn’t sound Irish to me – the odd word maybe.
Her accent does seem to have changed though.
Yeah, that’s not very Irish. And she’s No True Scotsman either.
There’s only been 41 cases since 1941. Are the chances that this actually happened higher than the chances she’s deliberately affecting an Irish accent? Could it be some kind of hoax? Did this website suffer a massive exodus of skeptics?
41 cases since 1941? Is that a hoax too?
As long as it was not Ulster!
Relatedly, I’ve heard that there are cases of stroke victims who lose nouns but not verbs, and vice versa, since they’re stored in different places in the brain. Similarly, losing one’s native language but retaining a foreign language, etc.