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Flat-Hippo6122 t1_j67sjyk wrote

Reply to comment by tvieno in TIL about foreign accent syndrome. This is a very rare (~100 cases worldwide) but real medical condition where people abruptly begin speaking in a foreign accent following head trauma like a bad migraine, accident, or stroke. by veety

Indeed. Mostly likely the signals to the mouth muscles have been damaged, reducing the range of movement in certain areas. People could lose the ability to form the θ (th) sound in "think" and instead pronounce it like "sink". This would add an almost German tint to their accent.

It's not like one day they are speaking with a British English accent and the next they suddenly have a legit German accent.

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Bucksandreds t1_j683oxc wrote

From the info that’s available, that’s not correct.

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Flat-Hippo6122 t1_j68rkbb wrote

Please elaborate.
Where do I contradict the "info" available?

I didn't have time to read the link posted, but have heard of the syndrome before.

Having finally read the link posted, it falls in line with the example I gave. It also states that people's accents randomly changed after experiencing some form of trauma to the brain (including the area responsible for speech) or nervous system (which the brain uses to transmit and receive data to and from the body).

Surely these imply that the syndrome is something affecting signals to the mouth, causing restrictions in movement and therefore sound production.

Their accent wouldn't be a true German accent either. It would just have hints of a German accent because not all the vocal sounds have changed.

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Bucksandreds t1_j68ws2o wrote

I guess we’re having a misunderstanding of what each other is saying. I was implying that it wasn’t so simple as one sound being different but a complete or near complete change in pronunciations across a spectrum of sounds. Changing the way one pronounces a single sound, would not be sufficient to make a listener believe that they’re hearing a foreign accent.

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Flat-Hippo6122 t1_j6992j6 wrote

Ah right.

I was just using a single sound as an example because I was feeling too lazy to get a collection of phonetic characters, a fault on my part.

Seeing as a lot of sounds use the same muscle groups, it stands to reason that multiple sounds will be affected from signal damage to the brain or nervous system rather than just one. It still wouldn't create a genuine German accent though, only hints of one. (I'm using German as an example purely because I recently watched a video on how to talk like Einstein)

I agree that a single sound change wouldn't sound foreign, but would sound unique, i.e., Sean Connery's accent.

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