A rare medical phenomenon, foreign accent syndrome, is being studied using the example of 45-year-old American Robin Vanderlip by researchers at the University of Maryland. In May 2007, a woman fell down a staircase and hit her head hard, after which her American accent changed to a typical Russian accent
In May 2007, a 42-year-old resident of the American state of Virginia, Robin Vanderlip, did not suspect that her life could change after one fall from the stairs of her own house. Rolling off her and hitting her head against the wall, she lost consciousness, and woke up already practically a different person - her hitherto usual Mid-Atlantic American accent in those parts was replaced by a typical Russian, writes The Washington Post.
For the first time, the foreign accent syndrome was described at the beginning of the 20th century by the French neurologist Pierre Marie. The nature of the disease is not entirely clear. Perhaps the syndrome only manifests itself when certain parts of the brain are damaged. Since the early 1940s, approximately 60 cases have been reported. The British began to speak with a Jamaican accent, Americans with Scottish, Spaniards with Hungarian, and so on.
Its strange pronunciation for the eastern state (for example, "dis" instead of "this", "dat" instead of "that" and "wiz" instead of "with") for the third year in a row has surprised not only neighbors, but also scientists from the National Institutes of Health and University of Maryland who are studying an unusual case. If the former largely write off everything on divine will or fatal accident, the latter argue that Vanderlip suffers from an extremely rare medical phenomenon - the foreign accent syndrome.
It usually occurs after a traumatic brain injury, as in this case, or a stroke. The patient begins to speak as if with a foreign accent, even if he himself has never seen or heard his new "compatriots". Vanderlip's case can serve as a good illustration of this: before the fall, she, by her own admission, had never been to Russia, never met its natives, and did not show any interest in the Russian language at all. A woman has lived in the USA all her life.
Now she has to listen to questions from curious people almost every day: "Where did you come from?" - and with a constant Russian accent to answer: "Nowhere." The end of this test is not in sight: modern medicine is powerless in the face of this disease, and Vanderlip can either get used to her new role (if she has not already done so in the past three years), or learn Russian and go to Russia.
True, it is possible that there she will surprise everyone with her American accent, the doctors warn.
