Woman wakes up in hospital with Chinese accent...

A woman from Devon who suffers from acute migraine headaches has begun speaking with a Chinese accent, despite never having been to China.



Sarah Colwill, 35, an IT project consultant from Plymouth in Devon has been diagnosed with the extremely rare condition Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS). Experts believe FAS is caused by strokes and injuries to the brain. As a result the injuries cause sufferers to lose the ability to speak in their native accent, due to areas in the left side of the brain linked with speech and language being damaged. Since 1941 there have only been sixty reported cases of the condition worldwide. Research into the condition is ongoing due to the complex nature of the disorder. John Coleman, a professor of phonetics at Oxford University, told Sky News: "FAS is extremely diverse, almost certainly not 'one thing', not a well-defined medical phenomenon.It is not the kind of problem that there are any easy generalisations about."

Sarah's ordeal began when she had an extreme migraine which made her call for an ambulance. This was nothing out of the ordinary for Sarah as she has suffered from frequent migraines for decades. It was the bizarre events which followed which have left Sarah sounding like a completely different person. When Sarah woke up at the hospital her speech had changed and instead of her West Country accent she now sounded Chinese.

In an interview with Sky News Sarah said: "I spoke to my stepdaughter on the phone from hospital and she didn't recognise who I was. She said I sounded Chinese. Since then I have had my friends hanging up on me because they think I'm a hoax caller."

Sarah who lives with her husband, has begun speech theory in an attempt to get her native West Country accent back. However shes admits; "I am frustrated to sound like this, I just want my own voice back, but I don't know if I will get it back."

Despite the limited number of cases in the last sixty years, there have been a few reported cases in recent years. In 2007, an speedway rider from the Czech Republic spoke fluent English when he woke from a coma despite the fact he was only able to speak basic English before his accident.
In 2006 in a similar story to that of Sarah Colwill; Linda Walker, a 60 year old woman from Newcastle woke up having suffered a stroke to find that her Geordie accent had transformed into a Jamaican accent.