An Australian woman who speaks with a French-sounding accent after a head injury eight years ago says the linguistic anomaly has left her frustrated and reclusive.
Leanne Rowe, born and raised on the southern Australian island of Tasmania, was in a serious car crash in which her back and jaw were broken.
"Slowly, as my jaw started to heal, they said that I was slurring my words because I was on very powerful tablets," she said.
As she recovered, Rowe found that she had what sounded like a strong French accent.
"It makes me so angry because I am Australian," she said. "I am not French [though] I do not have anything against the French."
The condition has had a big effect on her life and her daughter usually speaks for her in public.
Rowe has not had a definite diagnosis but her family doctor believes she is Australia's second case of the rare condition called foreign accent syndrome.
"She had a normal Australian accent for the whole time I knew her before that," he said.
"She'd done French at school but she'd never been to France, and didn't have any French friends."
Only a few dozen people worldwide have been documented as suffering from the syndrome, which was first recorded in 1907. It is linked to damage to the part of the brain that controls speech.
In 2010 a New Zealand woman with multiple sclerosis found her Kiwi tones turning into a mix of Welsh, Scottish and north London accents and a scan revealed two lesions on her brain.
Other cases include that of an English woman speaking with a French accent after a stroke, and a Norwegian woman who spoke with a German accent after being hit by shrapnel in 1941.
Three years ago a woman in England reportedly began speaking with a Chinese accent after a migraine attack.
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