
Foreign Accent Syndrome - pseudolus
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/nov-23-psychedelics-and-waking-dreams-adding-feeling-to-virtual-reality-the-greatest-ape-and-more-1.5369357/now-i-have-a-lovely-scottish-brogue-the-science-behind-foreign-accent-syndrome-1.5369364
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smcl
Scot here - there's undoubtedly a Scots feel to the accent of Sharon Campbell-
Rayment, but it's more like that of an originally non-native-English speaker
who moved to Scotland and then lived there for >20 years. There's a couple of
things I noticed in her first clip which might interest folks here:

1\. the way she says "Scotteesh or Ireesh" in the first 2 seconds doesn't fit
100%. That way of pronouncing "-ish" as "-eesh" exists but for a more raw
working class accent than what she has. So my dad is from Govan, a pretty
working class area of Glasgow, and he'd say it like that. I grew up in
Northeast Scotland and have an accent closer to hers and I wouldn't pronounce
it this way.

2\. The way she says "... we've since known that it is a ..." makes me think
of a Northern Irish accent

3\. Her "Inverness" has the emphasis backwards which is common in for
Americans and Canadians when pronouncing Inver- and Aber- placenames. We would
emphasise the second half - InverNESS, AberDEEN - whereas she's saying
INVERness (or INverness). So she's picked up the general pronunciation, but
some of the Canadian quirks are still present.

In any case it's super interesting!

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thr0w3345
Fellow Invernesian here — you still local or escaped for different pastures?

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smcl
Aberdeen originally but I’m over in Czech Republic now

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pmontra
Probably this proves the point of the article. I'm Italian and the accent of
the lady labelled as French/Italian sounds somewhat German to me: no Italian
would stop between syllables like that. On the other side I can imagine why
that could sound Italian to English speakers. Italian has very few vowel
sounds compared to English and for us is hard to learn all the intermediate
vowels, for example between a and e. The lady seems to have lost them too. I
wonder if she can learn them back.

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verst
Native German speaker here. I listened to the clip -- the accent sounds like a
mix between Scottish and Swedish to me.

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stapled_socks
As a native Swedish speaker, it sounded more like a latvian or lithuanian
person trying to speak British English.

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Chanderton
Native swedish/english speaker here. I agree that it sounds like she's trying
to speak with some unidentified British accent.

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yorwba
> In fact, according to linguist Sheila Blumstein, it's not really a foreign
> accent at all. Rather, it's a change in speech patterns that listeners
> interpret as an accent — though sometimes a bad one.

Well, that's much more plausible than suddenly being able to imitate a
specific different accent perfectly. I wonder whether any Scots were involved
in identifying her speech patterns as Scottish.

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pakitan
There is a sound clip in the article. I'm not a Scot and not even a native
English speaker but I can recognize some Scottish "artefacts" in her speech.
Nevertheless, she definitely didn't go full Braveheart and is nowhere near
having a "perfect" accent.

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krilly
There are many Scottish accents, and Braveheart isn't one of them.

To me it sounds very much like Inverness, or maybe a native Gaelic speaker
from the outer Hebrides. They have an interesting accent which sounds somewhat
foreign, despite debatably being more native than English

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joegahona
I think "Go full Braveheart" was used for humorous effect. Would "go full
Trainspotting" have passed your correctness meter? :)

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mellosouls
Very interesting, and the suspected actual effect (structural changes in how
the words are formed that are _interpreted_ as a bad foreign accent), seem
consistent with some physical techniques to mimic others.

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BrandoElFollito
I am French and had to read the text below the audio a few times to make sure
that what I am hearing is indeed labeled as French.

There is nothing French in how she is speaking. Some weird German-like vibe
maybe.

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xiaq
> In fact, according to linguist Sheila Blumstein, it's not really a foreign
> accent at all. Rather, it's a change in speech patterns that listeners
> interpret as an accent — though sometimes a bad one.

Well, accents _are_ just that, differences in speech patterns.

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mantap
The difference is that an accent is a speech pattern associated with a
specific locality or people. Whereas a speech pattern just means the way
someone speaks.

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crimsonalucard
I think this points to a specific amount of accent "modes" for languages in
the human brain. There's a small finite amount and the human brain can only
operate within the bounds of a single accent "mode."

When you damage one accent "mode" in your brain, it has to switch to the next
available one. Since the amount of accent "modes" are small and finite you get
people who switch to a mode that is recognize-able and used in another part of
the world that speaks the same language with a different accent.

