What if your voice didn’t sound like your own?
About 60 people have Foreign Accent Syndrome, which has given their voice the semblance of a foreign accent. What causes it, and how has it affected their lives?
Linguist Daniel Midgley speaks with Dr Karen Croot on this episode of Talk the Talk.
Listen to this episode
You can listen to all the episodes of Talk the Talk by pasting this URL into your podlistener.
http://danielmidgley.com/talkthetalk/talk_classic.xmlI’ve always been curious about Foreign Accent Syndrome, so when a recent Australian case came up, I jumped at the chance to talk to Dr Karen Croot of the University of Sydney, who has studied this in depth. And that’s the current episode.
After taping, I started running across more and more cases, including a woman who had migraines so bad that she sounded Chinese. And I still don’t know what to make of George Michael’s episode. But if you want to find out more, check it out.
Show notes
Look — a Warlpiri dictionary.
http://ausil.org/Dictionary/Warlpiri/index-english/index.htm
Leanne Rowe has Foreign Accent Syndrome.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-16/tasmanian-woman-wakes-after-car-crash-speaks-with-a-french-accen/4757146
So does Tiffany Roberts Noell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RujUiV08jY
There’s quite a bit on it in the literature.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18714807
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8811940
Dr Croot’s webpage
http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/staff/karenc/
