Woman wakes up with a Welsh accent - despite never going to Wales

13 July 2023 , 15:12
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Zoe Coles has begged for help to bring back her usual Lincolnshire tones (Image: @ZoeColes)
Zoe Coles has begged for help to bring back her usual Lincolnshire tones (Image: @ZoeColes)

A woman who has never visited Wales in her life has appealed for help after waking up and finding she now speaks in a Welsh accent.

Fed up Zoe Coles, from Lincolnshire, says the twang in her voice suddenly started last year and she originally believed it sounded German. Last year Zoe, who has had to quit her job as a result of her problematic voicebox, was diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder but she thinks she may have Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS)- a rare condition where damage to the brain makes someone speak differently.

Now she has appealed for help via her social media accounts to restore her voice to its usual tone.

Woman wakes up with a Welsh accent - despite never going to Wales qhidqkiqkhiquxinvZoe believes she has foreign accent syndrome (@ZoeColes)

She told the BBC: “It won't go away, I think it's stuck.

“There are many FND sufferers but this accent syndrome... something has obviously gone wrong up in my brain, like something's obviously not right, because who on earth wakes up speaking a totally different accent?

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"So I would like to work with somebody [who] can help me and then we can help others."

In 2021 an American woman woke up with a strong New Zealand accent after being in a coma for two weeks.

Summer Diaz, 24, was hit by an SUV as she crossed a road on November 25 last year, which caused her to develop foreign accent syndrome.

The driver called for help and Summer was rushed to the nearest hospital, where they discovered she had suffered a host of injuries including a broken pelvis, broken shoulder and a brain injury. After the accident on November 25 last year, she spent two weeks in an induced coma.

When she woke up, she was disoriented and confused and spoke in a new accent.

Summer, 24, said: “My nurses would come in and say ‘where are you from?’ and wouldn’t believe me when I said ‘I’m from here.’

“I would explain I was born here but they would say ‘but you have an accent.' I had to explain that it wasn’t my accent and I just started doing it.”

Throughout her recovery, Summer went through a range of accents, with some lasting just a few hours and others staying for months.

She said: “I had a very British accent, close to my boyfriend’s for a while. I had a French one at one point and briefly, I was Russian.

“At the minute, it’s settled on an Australian or New Zealand accent.”

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Antony Clements-Thrower

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