Waking Up And Speaking In Another Accent: FAS

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world” -- Ludwig Wittgenstein.

An Arizona woman woke up and found herself speaking with a British accent. An Australian woman woke up and realized while taking a shower that she's an Irish accent. Such cases are rare but they do happen. It's called Foreign Accent Syndrome.

Head injuries, stroke, surgery, or diabetes may be the culprit which affected part of the person's brain. The experts aren't too sure -- they don't know enough about it. Just about one hundred people are known to have got a FAS.

The experience is genuine but the accent isn't a real accent. It's just that the brain faces some difficulty in carrying out the complex job of producing speech.

The accent is one of those things that define our identity. When your accent gets altered, a part of your identity has become altered. People with FAS are at the risk of being accused of faking an accent.