A British woman is now speaking with a Chinese accent after suffering from an extreme migraine that apparently left her with some brain damage. If it sounds hokey, there's actually a name for this condition; it's called Foreign Accent Syndrome. Being that the woman had never even traveled to China and had never studied Chinese, her new accent, and those acquired by other individuals with the syndrome, is merely perceived and categorized as "Chinese" by listeners. Thus, the affected individual's new inflection is not an unconscious imitation of another language in any form, but rather their new pronunciation and tone, induced by a stroke or serious migraine, is a particular recipe that is ripe for perception by others as fitting a particular foreign accent.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
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