Emily Egan, 31, who went mute for two months after a mystery brain injury, has finally got her voice back, but now speaks with four different accents. Doctors were perplexed after countless tests failed to explain why she lost the ability to speak. And when she finally began to talk again, Emily’s voice sounded nothing like the Essex accent she had before. Emily, from Bournemouth, now mostly speaks with a Polish accent——even in “broken English” at times—but her accent can suddenly change to sound French and Italian as well. If she experiences a lot of stress, her accent will become Russian, and when she is exhausted, Emily can lose the ability to speak altogether.
After months of being confused, Emily has finally been diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome—a rare speech disorder caused by brain damage. Initially suffering from headaches, she went to hospital and doctors suspected a stroke at first, but tests ruled out. Finally, she lost the ability to speak altogether and doctors were baffled. They believe her speech disorder was caused by brain damage, but don’t yet know what happened to cause the damage.
Emily said, “It’s not just my accent that has changed. I don’t speak or think in the same way as before and I can’t construct sentences like I used to. I write differently now, my whole vocabulary has changed and my English has got worse.”
Emily and her partner Bradleigh, 27, had booked a holiday to Thailand before she fell ill and her doctor encouraged her to take the trip and try to relax as much as possible. Five days into her holiday in March 2020, Emily slowly began to speak again but with great difficulty. “I was so thrilled when my voice started coming back but now I don’t even recognize the voice that comes out of my mouth, it doesn’t sound like me,” she said.
本时文内容由奇速英语国际教育研究院原创编写，未经书面授权，禁止复制和任何商业用途，版权所有，侵权必究！(免费同步微课、每日口语、单词速记关注奇速优课公众号)
13980503458
13980503458
admin@qisuen.cn
