Talk:Foreign accent syndrome

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Contents 1 Famous Sufferers? 2 Foreign Accent Syndrome 3 Newspaper plagiarises Wikipedia? 4 Plagiarism?

[edit] Famous Sufferers?

Im not sure but i think Sting suffered from this condition when he was a singer in The Police, he's from Newcastle but often sang with a Jamaican-esque accent like "Roxanne, you don' have to turn on de red light" but other times he would sing with his native accent, like "Message in a Bottle"

Former Spanish primer minister José María Aznar has the syndrome. Humorists had a crack with his sudden outbursts of Mexicanized Spanish when he was visiting Bush in Texas. In a recent press conference in Italy he spoke Spanish in a strange Italianized form. --Amador 23:03, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Foreign Accent Syndrome

Can't find any reference to it, but in a recent TV item an American sufferer spoke with an "English" accent which sounded like Dick Van Dyke in "Mary Poppins", i.e. it was a pretty poor attempt at an English accent. Presumably the quality of the "foreign" accent depends upon the skills of the sufferer. That is not to say it is deliberately faked - but certainly it is not a "genuine" foreign accent. Anjouli 17:36, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Surely it just sounds like one. It's an phonetic impairment (caused by brain damage) which makes the speaker sound foreign. Secretlondon 17:38, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)

I beg to differ. The example I heard sounded exactly like an American trying to sound British. And I mean exactly. But perhaps that was an example of somebody doing it on purpose because of some psychological compulsion. There may well be two different illnesses here. One a compulsion to impersonate and the other an organic interference with the speech-process.Anjouli 18:09, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think the case you mention above is the same one quoted below (on the BBC report). I wouldn't say it was a Dick Van Dyke cockney at all. It has some British pronunciation but it's not pin-downable to a region or class. There is an accompanying video. The video suggests that doctors believe it is psychological in origin but the text of the report suggests that the speech patterns on the speaker become mangled with injury and that this is interpreted as a foreign sounding accent in the hearer. Mintguy

It is indeed. The 'accent' as opposed to speech impediment is all in the minds of the hearer. Some people have supposedly picked up accents they've never heard before. Morwen 17:40, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A PubMed search for "Foreign accent syndrome" certainly points in the direction of this being physical, rather than psychological, in nature. -- Anon.

Presumably, one would think, the foreign accent would have to be one with which the patient already has a certain degree of familiarity. Nowadays, with global communication and media coverage having become everyday phenomena, most people have at least some exposure to a wide variety of accents--at a minimum, British, French, German, Russian, Indian, Mexican/Latin American and Chinese. If the syndrome is psychological, I wonder if knowledge of the language behind the accent plays any role. For example, I speak German almost fluently, and thanks to extensive practice in reducing my American accent (yes, we do have an accent) as well as exposure to German speech, I can imitate the German accent without the common excessive exaggeration. (No German I've ever met utters mangled consonants like "Ve haff Vays uff makink You tak.") It would also be interesting to find out whether the foreign accent syndrome extends to grammar--would I start saying things like "The most of us came" or "Since six years I am living here"? Brain damage can definitely affect linguistic ability in unpredictable ways. A Frenchwoman I know whose grandfather was American and had lived in Cherbourg for fifty years told me that when he suffered a stroke, he lost a lot of his French vocabulary and syntax, but it gradually returned. --Bamjd3d

This is the most recently reported case ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3235934.stm ) I think it was also reported on the front page of The Daily Telegraph. Mintguy 17:49, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't think this is really treated as a syndrome. From what I've learned on the topic, people sometimes develop speech problems as a result of brain injuries. Some of them happen to end up sounding like a foreign accent. That doesn't mean, though, that it is necessarily a syndrome; it's more of a coincidence. WoodenTaco 02:21, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

On the Discovery Channel, on a program called "Medical Incredible", it was said that there had been only 20 reported cases since 1919. --Guthrie

And they also said not all experts agree; that it could result from having heard an accent at some time in life and the brain ending up employing it. To me, it seemed like the brain, with trauma is like "Now how do I use speech again? This instance of talking to Lord Byrington Femmingwether *trying to make a stereotypical British name* seems familiar; this must be the correct way to speak!" Kinda like some horribly crossed wires.

[edit] Newspaper plagiarises Wikipedia?

This July 3 "Evening Chronicle" article includes the paragraph about the Norwegian woman, word for word. And the article was last edited in April. Hmm. Sandstein 17:03, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plagiarism?

Here is an artcile from the BBC's website from 2002 that would seem to have been at least partially plagiarised for the Wikipedia entry.

From the BBC page: 'To add insult to injury, some doctors dismissed the problem as more likely to be psychiatric in origin than physical.

Dr Jennfier Gurd, who led the research with phonetician Dr John Coleman, said: "The way we speak is an important part of our personality and influences the way people interact with us.

"It is understandably quite traumatic for patients to find that their accent has changed."

Dr Coleman told BBC News Online: "There is a good likelihood in time you are going to improve and become more like you used to be."'

Compared to the (later) Wikipedia entry: 'Usually, it is very traumatic for stroke patients to find that their accent has unexpectedly changed, usually adding insult to the previous, severe brain injury. Furthermore, many physicians have dismissed foreign accent syndrome, calling it psychological.'

'Dr. Jennifer Gurd and Dr. John Coleman, the latter a phonetician, have studied patients of this condition, and have found that the great majority are severely traumatized. However, Coleman believes that in time, patients may improve, regaining their former speaking abilities.'

That's not plagiarism, at least from a legal standpoint. The fact that it has been removed from the article saddens me, as it is hypercorrection. Paraphrasing another work is perfectly legal, as long as the work is not fictional (and thus the actual fictional situation and characters are under copyright). Anyways, since we Wikipedians cannot do original research, our only hope is to paraphrase other works. As long as a reference is given, there is nothing academically wrong with it, either. It might be discouraged in school, where the focus is getting the students to learn to write for themselves (and allows original research), but that doesn't make it dishonest in an encyclopedic setting. I'll leave it to another editor to decide whether or not to re-add the information.

-- trlkly 20:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)