English woman who suddenly woke up with a Welsh accent calls for medical help, says: ‘I think it’s stuck’
- Zoe Coles, from Lincolnshire, speaks with a Welsh accent due to a rare condition
- You have a Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), which affects motor control.
An English woman calls for help after she suddenly developed a thick Welsh accent despite never having been to the country.
Zoe Coles, who lives in Lincolnshire, fears the distinctive accent is ‘stuck’ and won’t go away after she started speaking with a Welsh accent six weeks ago.
The bar worker, who originally developed a German accent before it morphed into Welsh, believes she has developed Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS), a rare condition that changes the way people speak. .
While it may seem amusing, Ms Coles says she hasn’t been able to go to work and worries that something has “gone wrong with my brain”.
She is seeking medical help to deal with the problem, which could be related to a neurological condition that has left her in chronic pain.
Zoe Coles woke up six weeks ago to find that she had developed a Welsh accent even though she had never been to the countryside.
She is asking for help finding an expert or neurologist who can help her deal with the sudden change.
The Lincolnshire native, who worked at The Raymond Mays pub in Bourne, was diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), something that affects motor control and speech, last year.
Studies have linked FND to foreign accent syndrome, but now she is seeking help and has asked for help on social media to find an expert or neurologist who can do this.
It comes after she said she was unable to get a referral to a specialist at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Talking with him BBCshe said: ‘There are a lot of FND sufferers, but this accent syndrome…something obviously went wrong in my brain, like something obviously wasn’t right, because who the hell wakes up talking with a totally different accent?
‘So I would like to work with someone [who] you can help me and then we can help others.’
Prior to the recent development, Ms Coles, who posts videos of dealing with FND on social media, spoke with a southern English accent.
In videos shared to her @zoecoles1 TikTok account, she reveals how she deals with the condition that leaves her in chronic pain and sometimes even makes her lose the ability to speak and walk for periods of time.
But this latest development has left her even more frustrated, saying in a video: “I just had this accent and it won’t go away, I think it’s stuck.” She hoped it was just a problem and she would get over it.
She told the BBC: ‘A lot of people ask me, ‘Where are you from, Cardiff?’ I feel like I have to explain to them what happened.
“You really don’t know, it’s very rare, so people don’t think it’s a thing.”
Ms Coles added that she was willing to be a ‘guinea pig’ to get to the bottom of what is causing her change in accent.
‘I would like to work with someone who can help me and then we can help others. I want to help everyone who has this. I’m not the only person, but let’s start with me. I will be a guinea pig.
