Friday, May 06, 2011

Oregon Woman Wakes Up From Oral Surgery With a British Accent


It could be worse. She could have woken up with a Boston accent.
Karen Butler is from Oregon, not England. When asked where she got her accent, she says from her dental surgeon.

In 2009 Butler, a 56-year-old tax consultant in Toledo, Ore., awoke from denture implant surgery with an accent that's a bit British with a Transylvanian twang, and it just sort of stuck.

"I had just had surgery, so at first we assumed it was because of all of the swelling," said Butler. "But within a week the swelling went down and the accent stayed."

Butler has foreign accent syndrome -- a condition so rare that only about 60 cases have been documented worldwide. Often preceded by a small stroke, the new drawl is thought to stem from a minor injury to a tiny area of the brain responsible for language pattern and tone.

"This is a very small part of the brain that controls the articulation and the intonation of speech that's affected, and that's why it's so rare," said Dr. Ted Lowenkopf, a neurologist and medical director of Providence Stroke Center in Portland, Ore., in an interview with ABC News affiliate KATU. "The chances to hit such a small area are more than a million to one in a stroke."
If this ever happens to me I'd like to wake up with a Mark Steyn accent.

3 comments:

the wolf said...

This happened to both Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna without even having the surgery.  I think they both came down with a case of Pompous Assitis.

Toejam said...

The Micks are claiming it's an Irish accent. If it is Irish and you happen to meet her watch your wallet!

A Goy said...

Sounds South African / Afrikaans to me.