Since Josefine Swan lost her ability to speak in 2023, she has been seeing a speech therapist to gain fluency in the language. Despite a year of trying to restore her speech, she has instead been given several different dialects without success in getting her Scanian dialect back.
– I have really tried to find my way back to my old dialect. After all, Scanian is what I have spoken all my life, but it becomes very strange and contrived, it does not come naturally to my mouth.
Hear Josefine talk about the speech change and hear how she spoke earlier in the clip above.
The diagnosis: Foregin accent syndrome
The first symptoms of Josefin’s illness appeared in 2021 when she suffered a sudden loss of vision, double vision and intense headaches. The following year she became partially paralyzed on the right side of her body. When in 2023 she lost the ability to speak completely, during rehabilitation she began to speak different dialects in an unexpected and random way.
About a week ago, Josefin was diagnosed with FAS, foreign accent syndrome, which means that you speak a different dialect than your own. The disease is part of the diagnosis of functional neurological symptom disorder, which means that the nerves in the brain do not work as they should but have been damaged.
The disease Josefin suffered from is extremely rare and there are only around 100 documented cases of patients with FAS in Sweden.
– I have had to feel ashamed of myself because no one in healthcare has been able to tell me what this has been.
“Feeling very lonely”
Due to the fact that there is so little research and knowledge about foreign accent syndrome, Josefin has been met with distrust regarding her different dialects in her everyday life.
– I feel very alone in this, I don’t think people understand how hard it is not being able to talk like usual.
Due to the neurological symptoms that Josefin experiences – such as fatigue, paralysis and headaches – she has had to completely change her life.
– I live for the day and try to have as nice days as possible, hearing friends plan for a week ahead just doesn’t exist in my world.
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Can you really change dialect and what is functional neurological symptom disorder? Hear professor Bo Norrving explain in the clip. Photo: Anna Simonsson/SVT