Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare and under-researched clinical picture, but it poses one of the great enigmas of neuroscience in relation to language. In general terms, it is a condition in which a person suddenly acquires, without apparent explanation, an accent different from the native one.

In this article we explain what Foreign Accent Syndrome is, what its main features are and what science has found so far.

What is Foreign Accent Syndrome?

Foreign Accent Syndrome is characterized by the sudden presence of an accent different from that of the mother tongue, while the speech is passing in a normal way. It was first described in 1907 by the neurologist Pierre Marie, but few cases have been investigated.

It usually occurs after strokes and occurs seemingly suddenly. The person begins to speak in his/her mother tongue with total intelligibility, but with an apparently foreign accent that cannot be avoided and that the person does not recognize as his/her own .

Symptoms

The accent is recognized by others as different from the mother tongue, although it is not necessarily identified as that of a particular language. In other words, the accent is heard and interpreted by others as foreign, because significant changes are identified in the pronunciation of some syllables, consonants and vowels that are considered key to the mother tongue, but do not necessarily correspond completely to another accent.

Listeners may recognize that the speaker uses their native language (e.g. Spanish), but with an accent that may be French, English, German, or any other accent, which varies according to the opinions of the listeners. In other words, there is generally no agreement on what the perceived accent is, which is why it is also called Pseudo-Foreign Accent Syndrome.

This syndrome has been related to a neuromotive disorder, with which is also defined as an acquired disorder of the bean , in which the central nervous system plays a very important role. It may be accompanied by manifestations related to language and communication disorders such as aphasia and dysarthria, although not necessarily.

Representative clinical cases

González-Álvarez, J., Parcet-Ibars, M.A., Ávila, C. et al. (2003) have carried out a review of the scientific literature on Foreign Accent Syndrome, and they tell us that the first documented case was in 1917. It was about a Parisian who developed an “Alsatian” accent after receiving a war wound that had caused him a right hemiparesis.

Thirty years later, another well-known case of Foreign Accent Syndrome was published, in which a 30-year-old Norwegian woman suffered a frontotemporal injury after being the victim of a Nazi bombing, and consequently her accent began to be recognized by listeners as German.

Because of the extremely conflictive context in which he found himself, the German accent caused him various problems in doing everyday things, as he was identified as a German.

Cases of Foreign Accent Syndrome have also been described in the scientific literature without having had the previous experience of living with a second language . These are almost always monolingual people.

Associated medical conditions and possible causes

Most of the cases that have been investigated, describe the appearance of the syndrome after having been diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia, transcortical motor aphasia, lesions in the subcortical white matter in specific circumvolutions.

In addition to the motor areas of language, other brain areas that have been linked to Foreign Accent Syndrome have been the precentral gyrus, the lower central gyrus, the corpus callosum, and the insular cortex. The relationship with Rolando’s cleft and temporal areas has also been investigated.

In more general terms, the medical causes related to Foreign Accent Syndrome are mainly strokes in the left hemisphere , in relation to the areas involved in the automation of complex motor behaviours (such as speech, which requires very important neuromuscular coordination).

Currently, this syndrome is being researched in relation to the neuronal areas that regulate articulation, native speech acquisition and second language acquisition. However, there is no agreement on the methodological options that would be decisive in finding a definitive explanation for this syndrome.

For this same reason there is not enough information about prognoses and treatments, although some auditory and sensory feedback techniques have been tried that seek to modify verbal fluency, as well as auditory noise masking techniques that have been found satisfactory in treating, for example, stuttering, since people tend to improve their verbal fluency when they stop listening to their own voice.

Bibliographic references:

  • González-Álvarez, J., Parcet-Ibars, M.A., Ávila, C. et al. (2003). A rare speech disorder of neurological origin: foreign accent syndrome. Neurology Journal, 36(3): 227-234.
  • Srinivas, H. (2011) Transient foreign accent syndrome. Journal List, doi: 10.1136/bcr.07.2011.4466. Retrieved June 8, 2018. Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3214216/.