A Woman Went Mute For Months, Now Unable To Use Her Native Accent, Only Speaks With Four Different Languages

A woman named Emily Egan who went mute for two months because of a mystery brain injury has brought back her voice eventually but speaks with four different accents now.

Reports have it that Egan (31) had been suffering from headaches that lasted for two weeks before her voice suddenly turned more deepened in January 2020. Her speech also became very slow and slurred that is the main indication of a stroke. The woman was then hospitalized immediately to undergo extensive CT and MRI scans.

However, doctors were also perplexed after numerous tests to explain why Egan lost her ability to speak. During two months, she had to communicate through a “text to speak” app, and eventually, her own voice came back, though it stunned everyone as nothing was like before. Emily Egan now could speak but spoke with different accents, mainly Polish, sometimes Italian, French, and Russian.

The 31-year-old woman now speaks mostly in Polish accent (“broken English” sometimes) but her voice can switch to sound Italian and French suddenly as well. If she is stressed out, her accent turns Russian and when Egan is extremely exhausted, she cannot speak.

She said,

"It's not just my accent that has changed - I don't speak or think in the same way as before this and I can't construct sentences like I used to. I write differently now, my whole vocabulary has changed and my English has gotten worse despite living in the UK all of my life.”

She also revealed that her life has drastically changed as she has experienced abuse from strangers who thought she is foreign. She encountered a man shouting at her in a supermarket as he said foreigners like her brought Coronavirus into their country.

After several months, Emily has been diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome which is a rare disorder resulting from brain damage.

For those who are unversed, this condition has been seen in only 100 people across the world since it came in 1907.