Imagine, after a surgical operation, wakes up with a foreign accent. It seems unthinkable, but it is the fun accident that came to Laetitia. In a video posted by Le Petit Courrier, this 47-year-old mother who lives near Montval-Sur-Loir, in Srthe, says she woke up from her Amygdales operation, in June 2014, speaking with a strong English accent.
“When I woke up, I had this accent. I saw the surgeon in the place after the operation. He did not mention any specific problem, so I did not worry me,” Laetitia told the local newspaper.
Despite postoperative meetings, it is clear that, 11 years later, this way of speaking has never left it. “In auscultation, everything is normal. I don’t know what to tell you, you are a mystery to science,” said a doctor three months after his operation, before retiring. “The real shock was for my family that lives in another region. When I had them on the phone, they thought it was a gag.”
“Foreign Accent Syndrome”
If the history of Laeceia ready to smile, its affection is very serious. Sarchise suffers from “strange accent syndrome”, a rare disorder that generally occurs after a shock of the head or a brain injury.
In the case of Laeceia, it seems that something happened during the time it was under general anesthesia. In general, patients wake up without any particular problem, but it could be that an area of the brain has been a little less vascularized.
“I went to see speech therapists, ent. They replied that they could not do anything for me,” said Laetitia. Today, Sarchise says he no longer pays attention.
“This is something that is part of me,” she says, even if she says she always heard “her front voice” in her head.
Daily, some words have become difficult to pronounce. “For example, I can’t say ‘Toustroer’. With T and R, it is not easy to say. So I say ‘Paloma’ (…). My dog is called Vadrouille and it finds it difficult to obey me (…) should not understand me,” says Laetitia with a slight laugh.
Despite his accent, Laetitia does not speak English better than before. “I have bases, what we learn at school. But nothing else,” he explains. “Often, when I am in payment, I say that I am French and that I have an English accent. If people are not curious, that remains there. Otherwise, I explain patiently.”
Laetitia is one of the rare people affected by this syndrome worldwide, there are about fifty. One of the first known cases dates back to the 1940s. A Norwegian began talking to a German accent after being touched by a bus explosion. Another case, in 2011, an American, after an operation, woke up with the accent of Eastern Europe.
Source: BFM TV
