An English woman has shared how she woke up with a Welsh accent despite never visiting the country
Zoe Coles, 36, has Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) - a rare condition where people develop speech patterns that are perceived as a foreign accent.
Credit: SWNS
Credit: SWNS
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00:00 Nine months ago today I woke up speaking with a Welsh accent. Nine months ago today
00:06 I lost my identity. I lost part of who I am. And how have I coped? Not very well.
00:14 I'm not gonna lie. It's been the longest, hardest nine months ever. I mean no one
00:20 knows how long I'm gonna have this accent for. It could go, it could stay, it
00:26 could change. Anything could happen. That's foreign accent syndrome for you.
00:31 And yes I'm all over social media and yes I share my journey and I share my
00:38 story and for good reason. I feel like I want people to know that this is real
00:47 life. This has happened to me. I have woke up speaking with a Welsh accent and it's
00:55 bloody difficult. It's so hard because you do get questioned everywhere you go
01:03 or if you bump into someone that's Welsh. "Oh where you from?" Oh it's so
01:11 difficult and it's actually quite stressful. I talk for England and I don't
01:18 mind speaking about it all. I love to tell people I woke up speaking with a
01:25 Welsh accent and you know this has happened to me because I have functional
01:29 neurological disorder and then people are aware. So it does help spread the
01:33 awareness. However I need people to understand how real this is and how I've
01:41 lost my identity. I've lost part of who I am and I'm just trying to figure out
01:48 the new me. And even though it's been nine months I still haven't adapted
01:54 because I still miss my old voice. I still miss who I used to be, what I used
02:00 to do, how I used to go about my life and it's all different. It's all changed and
02:06 I'm still figuring out life and how to do life now I'm so unable to do so much.
02:15 And just like that the Welsh accent is back. It does just come back on its own.
02:23 It does just appear randomly and the same way the English and the slurred
02:29 and stuttered speech just appears naturally. It just comes and goes when it
02:34 pleases. There is no pattern. I've tried to figure out if
02:42 there's a reason it happens or I just I don't know why. I don't know
02:51 why. It's like the English speaking me is slurred and stuttered and it's
03:00 like a flare-up and it's part of my FND and then it's like the Welsh is
03:06 normal to me now. And that doesn't make sense. I can't get it to make sense
03:12 in my head. I can't get over that one minute I'm English one minute
03:19 I'm Welsh. It is really hard for me because I was English I woke up Welsh
03:25 and now I'm a bit of both and it just depends on what kind of day I'm having.
03:30 It's actually harder than you can imagine. How do you cope with that?
03:38 How do you cope with your accent being different and keep coming and going and
03:44 then when it's English it's slurred and stuttered? Your voice is who you are.
03:50 Your voice is your identity and mine keeps changing and I have no idea
03:58 why it keeps changing. So I'm always asked how or why I've woken up with a
04:05 Welsh accent and I don't know the answer to give to these people. I was told by a
04:12 neurologist that the word why doesn't matter. The reason why doesn't matter.
04:19 Why isn't important? Well actually I disagree because I've been asked to
04:26 accept that I've got foreign accent syndrome and FND and I'm finding it
04:32 really difficult to accept because I don't know the reason why I've got it.
04:37 So it's making it harder to accept without the reason and it's not like I can
04:44 ask Joe Bloggs around the corner because he's got it or Sally up the road because
04:49 she's got it. It doesn't happen to everyone. It's really rare. Foreign accent
04:55 syndrome is really rare to me but to the neurologist apparently it's not rare.
05:02 He sees this all the time but I'm struggling here. I'm struggling with why
05:08 this has happened to me. Why me? There's got to be a reason and I can't move
05:16 forward. My mental health is suffering because I don't know the reason why and
05:22 it's easier for you guys to say why does it matter because it matters a lot
05:28 because my whole life has been turned upside down. I've cried for the last week
05:33 because I can't do the physical things that I want to do. I can't do
05:38 the... I just there's so much I can't do that it's breaking me down bit by bit
05:43 and I want to know the reason why I've got this so I can try and fix it and
05:49 then other people can find out why they've got it and they can fix
05:55 themselves because we are all suffering and it really isn't fair.
06:02 [BLANK_AUDIO]