By Tim Binnall
An Australian woman who underwent what seemed to be a routine tonsil surgery was left positively bewildered when she woke up a few days later and discovered that she suddenly had an Irish accent. The strange condition reportedly befell Angie Yen two weeks ago as she was recovering from her operation. In the initial days following the surgery, she says, "I didn’t have any issues with talking or eating or anything like that, if anything the throat was just very, very sore." That normalcy, it seems, turned out to be an illusion as around 10 days after the operation, Yen woke up and realized something was amiss.
While singing in the shower ahead of a job interview scheduled for later in the day, she noticed something rather peculiar. "I was singing notes that I didn’t think I could hit before," Yen recalled, "I knew something wasn't right." Her misgivings were strengthened when she began speaking out loud and her speaking voice was also out of the ordinary. Uncertain exactly as to what might be going on, she phoned a friend who has traveled extensively around the world and they quickly identified her new accent as Irish. This is a particularly odd affectation because Yen has never traveled to Ireland nor has any family living there.
Although she has not been officially diagnosed by doctors, Yen understandably believes that she has developed 'foreign accent syndrome,' which is a fairly rare condition wherein a patient, as the name suggests, suddenly and inexplicably adopts the speaking style of a different land than that which they call home. This particular case is rather perplexing to medical experts as the syndrome is usually the result of brain damage, which Yen seemingly did not suffer during the tonsil surgery. Be that as it may, since that fateful morning two weeks ago, Yen's Irish accent has not gone away and she has now taken to social media to share her story in the hopes of raising awareness about the odd condition.