[imagesource: SWNS]

Welcome to the first Throwback Thursday of 2021.

Been a helluva year already, hasn’t it?

There was a fair amount of magical thinking that somehow, waking up on January 1, the world would be a better place.

Other than waking up at home without a searing hangover, that has not been the case, but at least I didn’t wake up speaking with a Chinese accent.

Enter Sarah Colwill, who on March 7, 2010, discovered her Devon accent had been replaced by a Chinese accent.

Strange, and even stranger when you consider that Colwill had never ever been to China.

Here’s the BBC interview that brought her story to the world:

Here’s more on foreign accent syndrome (FAS) from UT Dallas:

FAS is most often caused by damage to the brain caused by a stroke or traumatic brain injury. Other causes have also been reported including multiple sclerosis and conversion disorder and in some cases no clear cause has been identified.

Speech may be altered in terms of timing, intonation, and tongue placement so that is perceived as sounding foreign. Speech remains highly intelligible and does not necessarily sound disordered.

The most recent update I can find on Sarah’s progress is from 2016, when The Sun reported that “her West country drawl is finally returning after seven years”:

“People still think I’m not British, but it’s easier for me to make conversation most days…

“The more I am around people and pick up on how they speak, the more I learn. That has been quite hopeful for me. I’m learning all the time.”

Sarah’s story is still better than the first known case of FAS, from the Second World War, when a Norwegian woman was hit by shrapnel during an air raid.

The woman started speaking with a German accent, and was then ostracised by her local community.

To finish, here’s a 60 Minutes Australia segment from 2018, which also features Sarah:

[sources:utdallas&sun]