While collecting data from headlines of English papers
for my MA dissertation, I came across a curious article about a rather strange language fact.
The following short story is based on such strange
fact.
In the morning that I woke up in
the ward 38 of the Brotherton Wing, at Leeds General Infirmary, I did not feel
like myself. I mean, literally. I'd read Kafka's Die Verwandlung,
but it was nothing like that. I had all my human parts in the right place and
the face I saw in the mirror, as far as I could remember, was pretty much mine - with the familiar light frown lines of a man of 25. But that was just not me. I had no memory of how I had been brought to
that hospital ward and the healthcare assistant was of little assistance on
that question. Then this woman named Sharon, who I could not remember of
meeting before, came affirming that she was my mother. I had to tell her that I
had amnesia and had no memory of being acquainted with her. I lied. I knew
perfectly well that I had no amnesia. That woman simply couldn't be my mother
because I knew my mother well and she, unlike Sharon, couldn't speak a word of
English in the first place. And I wasn't mad either, since my English accent
certainly confirmed that Sharon had to have somehow made a mistake. In the
minute I began to talk to Sharon, she made an expression of bewilderment.
“What happened t' your voice? I cannot understand you well.”
In the following day - based on the fact that my English sounded
pretty much like that of a Latin American and on the information that Sharon
fed to the senior staff nurse - I heard the news. “What?”
“Foreign accent syndrome.” The nurse practitioner who came
that afternoon emphasised, visibly not convinced of her own words. “You
must be suffering from foreign accent syndrome. It's rare. But that's the only
explanation we can give you preliminary.”
“I heard you well. I've heard of this... syndrome once. But isn’t
this the result of a stroke or a head trauma?” I questioned, observing the
nurse's expression turn slightly uneasy.
“You're right. You present no apparent signs of stroke or
head injury. But the community support officers who rescued you at Hyde Park
informed us that they found you unconscious.” She
moved her eyes over the records sheet in her hands, as if to fill her
statement with some authority. “Whatever had brought you to
unconsciousness must've affected your brain too...”
I drifted off while the nurse excused
herself and left. Later, when Sharon appeared again, the head nurse came in
person and tried to enlighten us a little.
“Sadly, cases of foreign accent syndrome have become oddly
frequent in England in the last years. Yours, as far as we have knowledge, is
the third case in the UK just this year.”
The head nurse seemed to have a concern with providing us
information on that syndrome. In matter of minutes she gave us a mini lecture
that made me feel less of an oddball case. In Devonshire - Southwestern England
- an acute migraine sufferer named Sarah Colwill had a severe headache and,
after passing out, woke up no longer speaking with her usual West Country lilt
but with a Chinese accent instead. Just a hundred and thirty miles Northeast,
in Gloucestershire, another case involved a woman named Kay Russell who had
migraines as well and who, after a kip, woke up with a French accent. Under
that perspective, my case was less unusual.
“The's not much for us to do here now. We're discharging you this evening and you can go back
home with your mom.” Then, turning to Sharon, the head
nurse proceeded. “Make sure he returns still this week to obtain a
prescription from a local physician for an MRI scan of the brain. That should
solve this foreign accent enigma.”
Just before making her way out of ward 38, I could swear I
saw the head nurse give a wink to Sharon whilst they exchanged a light smile of
complicity.
Continues...
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