Poor Lisa Alamia. She’s liable to suffer the same problem as I have since she had surgery to correct an overbite.
She has developed a very rare condition called Foreign Accent Syndrome.
This was first described in 1907 and there have been just over 60-recorded cases, where the victim suddenly develops a strong accent usually after suffering some kind of brain injury.
A Norwegian woman in WWII was hit by shrapnel and developed a strong German accent – causing her to be shunned by her fellow, occupied, Norwegians. There are You Tube videos of a native Australian who developed a strong Balkans accent. And a woman from Plymouth, England (whom the Australian TV program commentator assures us “is a dead set Pom”) who developed a Chinese accent like you’d expect in your local takeaway.
But Lisa Alamia from Texas, has developed a “thick English accent.”
She’ll learn, as I have, the confusion, or frank incomprehension, when you try to talk about migraine or vitamins, or ask where the bathroom is.
Or my best illustrative anecdote of stopping at the local corner store, out in the country here in Virginia, and asking if they sell “tinned tomatoes” – and being looked at like I was from outer space.
