A Texas woman was shocked to wake up from hernia surgery to find that her southern accent had been replaced by a thick Russian accent.
Abby Fender, 39, found out after the procedure that her vocal cords were paralyzed and she no longer spoke as she had for most of her life. Doctors, stunned at first, eventually diagnosed Mrs. Fender with a rare condition known as Foreign Accent Syndrome.
The speech disorder is usually caused by some type of brain damage resulting from traumatic brain injury, stroke, aneurism, or a central nervous system disorder called multiple sclerosis. In some cases, no underlying cause is identified.
Foreign accent syndrome has puzzled neurologists and speech experts since it was first described in the early 20th century. While people develop accents over time as a result of the phonetic system, or sound patterns in their native language that they unconsciously learn as they grow up, FAS affects the entire patterns of a person’s phonetic system.
Since 1907, only about 100 cases of FAS have been diagnosed. Some cases have made headlines in recent years for their peculiarity, such as that of two Australian women who in 2021 both developed thick Irish accents while recovering from surgery despite having no ties to the country. .
Medical experts who have worked with Ms. Fender have diagnosed her with the rare Foreign Accent Syndrome
After the surgery, Ms. Fender was shocked to find that her singing was ‘paralyzed’ and her Texan accent had disappeared
Ms. Fender, a professional singer, said: ‘I woke up from my surgery and immediately knew something was very wrong with my voice, because I couldn’t speak at any volume.
“Soon I started feeling the pitch of my voice really, really high and we called it the ‘Russian Minnie Mouse voice’ where I sounded like a cartoon character all the time.”
Most of the 100 or so cases reported since 1907 resulted from damage to the speech center of the brain, Broca’s area. Located on the frontal lobe, Broca’s area is crucial to a person’s ability to articulate ideas and use words accurately in spoken and written language.
The condition is seen more often in women than in men and patients usually develop FAS as a result of stroke. In fact, the first reported case was in 1907 in a patient who had a stroke in the left hemisphere. It can also develop as a result of developmental or psychological disorders, trauma, or tumors.
Cases of FAS can include changes in the way people pronounce words, their syntax and vocabulary, as well as changes in vowel length and tenseness. Some people with FAS may have difficulty with sounds that involve tapping their tongue behind the top front teeth, such as “t” or “d”. Some don’t have a ruble to pronounce sound clusters like STR in words like “slapped.”
No incidence of brain injury has been reported in the case of Ms. Fender. More recently, her accent has switched to Ukrainian and Australian. She described the great impact this condition has had on her daily life, in which she is often asked about her strange and unexplainable accent.
She said, “I don’t want to lie about where I’m from, but sometimes I do because it’s easier. Every time I do this I feel like I’m denying who I really am and that’s not a good feeling, but I get asked ‘Where are you from’ at least 10 times a day.”
“I remember one time I said I was Ukrainian and the other person started talking to me in his native language. I had no idea what to do so I had to confess, but before the current war this was never a problem because no one asked questions.
“This isn’t that easy, so I try to avoid saying where I’m from and instead tell them what kind of accent they hear.”
Ms. Fender underwent a series of tests to determine the neurological underpinnings of her condition, including MRIs and CT scans, but the attempts were unsuccessful.
Her singing voice, which she had honed since she was eleven, also suffered. She said she couldn’t maintain the same pitch she had before surgery and had changed her tone.
There is a small risk of injury to the spine and nerves during surgery to repair a herniated disc. The most common complication, occurring in about one percent to seven percent, is a dural tear. It happens when the thin layer over the spinal cord or meninges is scored by the surgical instrument.
However, it’s unclear whether Ms. Fender suffered a dural tear or some other serious complication from her surgery that could explain the accent. She suspected that a complication during the procedure affected the Broca part of her brain, “but we’ll never know.”
A speech pathologist helped Ms. Fender regain her singing voice and relax her neck muscles enough to slip into her natural speaking voice.
She said, “I couldn’t believe it because it was a miracle to hear my own voice again.”
“It was like coming home after a really long journey, but this wasn’t going to last, because only by using certain techniques, like blowing bubbles in a bottle of water with a straw, will I get my old accent back.”
Despite the great strides she’s made in her speech therapy, Ms. Fender still relapses into an accent. Lately she said she spoke with an Australian accent.
She added, “I’m starting to feel good about everything, but of course my most recent change has brought unexpected feelings of fear and embarrassment. I don’t like not being in control or knowing how I’m going to sound.
“It’s very scary.”
