Mamma Mia! ‘Illness gave me 4 accents’ Zut alors!
EMILY IN LINGO LIMBO
A WOMAN left mute for two months after a mystery brain injury now speaks with four different accents. Doctors were perplexed after countless tests failed to explain why Emily Egan, 31, lost her ability to talk.
And when she finally began to speak again, Emily’s voice sounded nothing like the Essex accent she had before.
She now mostly speaks with a Polish accent – even in “broken English” at times – but her voice can suddenly change to sound French or Italian.
When Emily is stressed, her accent becomes Russian. And when exhausted, she can lose the ability to speak altogether. She said: “This whole experience has been exhausting and totally overwhelming.
“It’s not just my accent that has changed. I don’t speak or think in the same way and I can’t construct sentences like I used to. “I write differently. My whole vocabulary has changed and my English has got a lot worse, despite living in the UK all my life. “My dad has said that I don’t sound like me any more in that he’d never imagine me wording things like I do now. “I’ve even experienced abuse from strangers who think I am foreign. I had a man shout at me in the supermarket, saying that foreigners like me are the reason we have coronavirus. It has changed my whole life completely.” After months of confusion, Emily has finally been diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome – a rare and mysterious speech disorder. Medics initially suspected a stroke, but it was ruled out.
They believe her speech disorder was caused by brain damage, but do not yet know what caused it.
Emily had been suffering from headaches for two weeks before her voice suddenly deepened while she was working at the children’s home she manages in Bournemouth in January.
Her speech rapidly became slow and slurred – a key indication of a stroke – so Emily was taken to hospital, where she had extensive tests. Then she completely lost the ability to talk.
Emily said: “I knew a bit of basic sign language as I needed it for work years ago, but I just used my hands to express what I wanted to say.
“I had to use a ‘text to speak’ app on my iPhone which sounded like Stephen Hawking. It just wasn’t me. Adjusting to communicating like this was so hard – I felt like a completely different person.”
Emily was diagnosed with her syndrome in March and has been having vocal therapy via Zoom.
She added: “I’m an Essex girl normally. My accent was really recognisable and people always knew it was me calling.
“I was thrilled when my voice started coming back.
“But now I don’t even recognise the voice that comes out of my mouth. It doesn’t sound like me.
“I have to learn to accept that it’s OK for me to not be able to get the words out straight away, but it will come eventually.”