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4.20.2010

the migraine that became a chinese accent

This is a weird-ass story about a British woman who recovered from a migraine headache... and suddenly found herself speaking with "a Chinese accent": British woman finds herself speaking with Chinese accent after recovering from migraine. This headline is a joke right?
Sarah Colwill, 35, who has never been to China or studied Chinese, said she was at first amused by her strange voice.

But now, she just wants it to go away.

"I have my ups and downs about this," Colwill told Britain's Daily Mail newspaper. "The first few weeks it was quite funny, but to think I am stuck with this. My voice has started to annoy me now. It is not my voice."

"I have had my friends hanging up on me because they think I'm a hoax caller," Colwill, an IT project coordinator, added.

Colwill said she has been battling migraines for about a decade. After a recent attack, she awoke to ambulance workers telling her she "definitely sounded Chinese."
Colwill is convinced she's suffering from "foreign accent syndrome," a rare condition typically caused by damage to a part of the brain that controls speech and word formation. There are only 60 recorded cases in the world.

I'm having a hard time believing this, because it just sounds so ridiculous. You have a bad headache, and suddenly talk like you're from China? I guess it would be even more miraculous if she woke up to find out she was suddenly fluent in Mandarin. More here: Migraine attack gives English woman a Chinese accent.