KHOU.com reported that the mother of three began speaking differently six months ago after undergoing jaw surgery to correct an overbite.
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She has now been diagnosed with the rare neurological disorder, foreign accent syndrome, often confusing strangers when she speaks as if she has lived in the United Kingdom her whole life.
Alamia is adjusting to take pride of her new tone.
“People who don’t know me, they’re like, ‘Hey, where are you from?'” Lisa Alamia said.
The accent has made Alamia feel like an outsider in her eastern Texas hometown of Rosenberg. “I’m from Rosenberg. They’re like, ‘Where is that?’ I’m like, ‘Right here in Rosenberg.’ ‘Oh, you’re from here? How do you talk like that?'”
But afterward, she started speaking with a British accent.
A Texas woman underwent surgery on her jaw and woke up with a British accent. “Then I was like, ‘Oh, Lord, ‘” she added. The cause is often unknown, but it has been linked to strokes, head injuries and psychiatric conditions. In some cases, no clear cause has been pinpointed, according to experts at the University of Texas at Dallas.
But it didn’t, so she ended up seeing Dr. Toby Yaltho, a Houston neurologist. So far, it remains a mystery.
British singer George Michael reported having a similar problem in 2012, after a life-threatening bout of pneumonia.
If you were to wake up with a different accent, which one would you choose?
According to another 2015 BBC report, a British woman who’d been in a serious auto accident had the speech problem, too.
Alamia said that she didn’t publicly talk about her accent change for a few months because she was anxious that people would brand her a liar or judge her in some other way.
Does Alamia mind sounding something like Lady Mary Crawley of “Downton Abbey” fame?
Lisa said at first she struggled with the changes in her accent, fearing what people would think. When Alamia’s daughter pointed out her new accent, she thought her daughter was kidding.
“Ms Alamia said: “(The children are) like now there’s no way you sound ‘hood at all.
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Other words don’t roll of her tongue quite the way they used to, either. “Because someone’s [intonation is] going up and down, they might sound a bit Swedish, or it just changes the way the accent sounds”, Dr Stone told Sputnik.
