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An American in his fifties has had a very special side effect of the prostate cancer he was diagnosed with: he suddenly started to speak with an Irish accent. While he had never been there and never did before. Scientists have looked into the matter and published their research in the prominent British Medical Journal.
Foreign accent syndrome (FAS): that’s the condition the fifty-something from North Carolina suddenly began to suffer from when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. In his case, it was an Irish accent that he suddenly developed, and he appears to be no exception. In recent years, it has been diagnosed in several people worldwide.
How it is possible that someone suddenly starts speaking with a different accent is still a mystery to science. In this case it concerns an American in his fifties who had lived in England for a while in his twenties and has some Irish friends and relatives. But he never spoke with that accent himself, until now. He is the first example of someone with prostate cancer developing FAS, according to the study from Duke University in North Carolina and the South Carolina Urological Research Center.
His accent was uncontrollable. “It was present in all situations and became more and more dominant.” It started 20 months after the man’s treatment and continued until his death months later. “He had no neurological problems, psychiatric history or brain abnormalities that we could see on scans.”
According to the researchers, the change in accent may be caused by a condition called paraneoplastic neurological syndrome (PNS). This means that the immune system of cancer patients attacks parts of their brain, muscles, nerves and vertebrae. One of the first cases was identified in 1941, when a young Norwegian woman developed a German accent after being hit by shrapnel from a bomb during World War II.