10/09/2008

French accent syndrome

I have just stumbled on this indubitable proof that French is the language best suited to people with deficient brains:

Once in a great while people that have had a traumatic injury to the brain, thank God recover, however, with one small quirk. They develop a foreign accent. There are many parts of the brain which are involved in speech. It is not merely a matter of alterations of the part of the brain which control the muscles that produce sounds, something else happens. Some cases have been an English country side boy who developed a posh accent, an American who developed a British Yorkshire accent and a Norwegian lady that developed a German accent. But perhaps one of the most common is English speakers who develop a French accent. In fact it is also referred to the French accent syndrome.


This calls to mind the story of the French civil servant whose skull was filled with water and almost no gray matter at all.

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