"Dingo Ate Ya Baby?"

Maybe this belongs in an Oliver Sacks book, so I'll leave the grandstanding and philosophical diatribes to him. But a woman with a New York accent suffered a stroke and began speaking with a British accent, even though she'd never been to England or used such an accent before. Click here to read more about Foreign Accent Syndrome. Of course, it's extremely rare; but it seems the rarer the neurological disorder, the more interesting it is.

As an aside, I have spent years trying to cultivate my foreign accents, and I am just godawfulbad at it. My friend Zander and I developed these two characters, the McGraw brothers (as in Bitch Face and Muscles McGraw--the famous Irish movers). Whenever I tried to speak in an Irish accent, it sounded like a shitty Godfather imitiation ("Bitchuh Faceuh, why you gotta carry that pillow while I gotta the piano on my backuh?"). My English and Australian accents turn into horrible Japanese accents.

Maybe I should take a hammer to my head to get a Foreign Accent Syndrome. About the only dialect, besides my own, I've mastered is a 16 year-old girl taking high school Intro to Spanish, asking "Where is the library?" It's a terrible hybrid of Spanish and whiny 16 year-old Texan ("Dondeeeee estaaa la biblioteeeeeca?"). Listen to that for three years in high school and you, too, will move to Minnesota. But after reading the story, Foreign Accent Syndrome actually sounds way more awful than fun. Oh boody hell, it looks like I am turning into Oliver Sacks with all my musings.