Newsable: Foreign accent syndrome is legit, here’s how it happens

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Imagine waking up one day after a serious injury with a different, foreign accent.

While it sounds like the plot of an Adam Sandler movie, it’s not.

According to a professor of speech pathology at the University of Sydney, it’s a very real and very serious thing called foreign accent syndrome (FAS).

“I’m actually working with two individuals at the moment who have foreign accent syndrome”, Kirrie Ballard tells Newsable.

The Daily Mail recently reported a woman in Texas claims she developed Russian and Aussie accents after surgery for her herniated disk.

“Each case is a little bit different, some can be triggered by some medical event that has caused a change in the way our muscles can move or the way our brain can control our muscle movements.”

Only around 100 cases of FAS have ever been diagnosed.

“It’s not common, I probably only get one call a year, so it is odd that I’ve had two calls together,” Ballard says.

So, what about when I slip into an Aussie accent mere minutes into being around my friends across the ditch?

“Just classic human behaviour”, apparently.

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