Who Knew?

Woman Suffers ‘Foreign Accent Syndrome’

After routine visit to the dentist.

Karen Butler went in for a routine dental appointment and left with a foreign accent. She appears to have developed “Foreign Accent Syndrome,” an incredibly rare neurological disorder usually caused by an injury to the part of the brain that controls speech. (Doctors say Butler may have suffered a small stroke while undergoing anesthesia at the dentist.) Her new accent—which, she says, she likes—is a combination of British, Irish, and Eastern European. There have only been about 100 known cases of the disorder: One British woman developed a Chinese accent after a migraine; another spoke with a French accent after suffering a stroke.