Family Handouts/PA Real Life
Woke up this morning, and I got myself an Italian accent.
A British grandmother and her family were left bewildered when she discovered she had started speaking like a native of Italy when she recovered from a stroke — despite never setting foot in the country.
Althia Bryden, 58, began to speak as if she were from Rome not London sometime after her May medical event — adopting a stereotypical Italian accent as she uttered words such as “Mamma Mia,” “bambino” and “si,” during conversations, Great Britain news reported.
“I feel like someone is impersonating me,” Bryden told the outlet.
Her doctors suspect she may be suffering from a rare neurological condition called “foreign accent syndrome,” which can happen after traumatic brain injuries.
She was discharged after her stroke on May 14th but was later readmitted in late July to undergo surgery.
Bryden’s stroke was caused by a rare blockage in her carotid artery left her unable to speak or use the right side of her body.
“The only thing I could do was point,” Bryden said.
Eventually, Bryden regained her ability to speak “completely out of the blue…but the more I spoke, the more confused we all became,” she said.
Her husband Winston recalled being “speechless” at his wife’s sudden Italian transformation. Their son even had to excuse himself to laugh at the bizarreness of the situation, the family told the outlet.
However, Bryden feels the sudden shift is no laughing matter.
“I feel like a clown with an upside-down smile that people are watching perform,” she said. “They are laughing, but I still have an upside-down smile,” she said.
“It’s very sad. Everything is different, even my body language is different,” she said. “People aren’t meeting the original me, I don’t know who I am.”
Bryden expressed her gratitude for recovering from the harrowing incident to the outlet, but still wakes up every day wishing her old voice would return.
“I’m still looking for the person I was before,” she said. “Where do I go to find the button to switch this stuff off?”