A British mum says she has been stuck with a Swedish accent for three years after suffering a heart attack.
Georgina Gailey claims she went from being “very well spoken” to speaking with the Scandinavian twang in the middle of a phone call with her sister.
The 60-year-old had suffered a heart attack over a year before and was chatting on FaceTime when she noticed her speech starting to change.
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She went to hospital where medics suspected a stroke but two weeks later she was diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome.
The mum-of-two, of Hillingdon, Middlesex, has been stuck with the accent for three years.
Georgina told What’s The Jam: “It’s changed my life, there’s a huge piece of me missing.
“I was very well spoken and now I sound Swedish.
“I say ‘ja’ rather than yes.
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“I didn’t notice how different it was at first until I listened to my answer phone message.
“It’s so different.
“People will ask where I come from and when I tell them I’m English, they laugh.
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“They think I’m Swedish.”
She has never been to Sweden – famous for being the birthplace of Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! group ABBA.
“When people laugh, I smile on the surface but underneath it makes me sad.
“They think I’m foreign but I’m English born and bred.
“I had a heart attack a few months before.
“I was getting better and was getting ready to get back to work.
“One night, I was on FaceTime to my sister and she noticed that I was mixing my words up.
“I went to the hospital and they thought I had a stroke, they kept me in for two weeks and then I was diagnosed with FND.”
Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare disorder where a person’s speech takes on an accent different from their usual one.
It can occur after trauma to the brain such as a stroke or disease.
Georgina has been to a number of neurologists in the hopes of getting her original accent back and is terrified she’ll be stuck sounding Swedish forever.
She said: “I don’t know if I’ll have the accent forever.
“It doesn’t feel nice thinking it might be stuck like this forever.
“My poor family have to put up with me.
“The longer I have the accent the more likely it is that it will stay.
“My brain will get used to speaking like this.
“It’s strange because if I sing, I sound English.
“It does change depending on how much sleep I get.
“It’s so strange.”
Georgina is speaking out to help raise awareness of the rare condition.
Georgina said: “I want to raise awareness because the more people know about it the more research will be done.
“The brain is very complicated.
“I joined a Facebook group for FND but I don’t personally know anyone who has it.
“It’s rare.
“I joined a Facebook group for FND but I don’t personally know anyone who has it.”
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