The world has seen a number of cases when people suddenly pick up a fake foreign accent. Some tend to smirk at it, while others claim that the explanation is pretty simple – the particular person has spent much time abroad. Doctors, however, blame Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS).

FAS is a rare speech disorder, when people suddenly start speaking with foreign accents. People can develop it after complications from a meningitis or brain surgery. FAS is a physiological problem, not a psychological one, doctors say.

FAS causes people to stress consonants or vowels where it should not be done in their language. Patients have their brain damage so limited that only the intonation and verbal stresses are affected. When people hear the unusual stresses, they compare them to other accents they have heard.

The first case of FAS was recorded back in 1941, when a Norwegian woman was struck in the head by shrapnel during an air raid. She suddenly found herself mispronouncing vowels and juggling stresses in such a way that she seemed to have a German accent.

The social isolation she endured because of the accent eventually caused her to seek treatment.

However, since FAS presents no great medical problems, it is often hard to get treatment for it. Ideally, doctors should do both look at the lesion in the brain and assigne a speech therapist to help a patient train the tongue.

Not all sufferers of the syndrome are unhappy with it, though, reports Io9.

One woman in the US state of Oregon, who had picked up a Britishy-Irishy-Scottishy accent, discovered that her new way of speaking made people respond to her more positively.

According to the woman, it inspired her to become more outgoing.

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