Rose Doré has lived her entire life in Southern Ontario, but, after a debilitating stroke two years ago, she started talking like a Newfoundlander.

“I don't know where it came from. I guess I'm lucky. A lot of people can't talk at all after they have a stroke. Lord Almighty,” she says, with an East Coast lilt to her voice. “My family thinks it's cute, but I don't.”

Mrs. Doré, 52, has an extremely rare condition called foreign accent syndrome. In fact, hers is the first documented case in Canada, says Alexandre Sévigny, a researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton.

The syndrome occurs when neurological damage, usually a stroke, causes patients to speak with what others perceive to be a different or foreign accent.

There is no single part of the brain responsible for foreign or regional accents. But strokes can damage a number of areas involved in instructing the muscles in the mouth and tongue to move during speech. Researchers who study the syndrome say this can subtly alter the way patients form sounds: They can lengthen their syllables, alter their pitch or change their pronunciation in ways that can sound like a distinctive accent.

In one case in the U.K., a woman woke up after a stroke and started talking with what sounded like a Jamaican accent, says Dr. Sévigny, an associate professor of cognitive science in McMaster's department of communication studies and multimedia. Another patient in Britain developed what sounded like a German accent, he says.

In June, 2006, Mrs. Doré starting feeling poorly during her shift at Tim Hortons in Hamilton, where she was living with her husband David. She went home. By the early morning hours, she knew there was something wrong, but, not wanting to wake up her husband, she took the bus to the hospital.

She doesn't remember much about those hours, but when her husband and children came to visit, they were shocked to hear her talking like a Newfoundlander.

Her doctors and nurses didn't think anything of it, assuming Mrs. Doré was from the East Coast. But her family told them she had rarely travelled outside of Southern Ontario, and had never been to Atlantic Canada.

Her medical team brought in Dr. Sévigny and Karin Humphreys, a cognitive psychologist. They recorded Mrs. Doré while she was talking, and then analyzed every syllable in order to map her accent.

In many ways, she did sound like someone born and bred in Newfoundland, says Dr. Sévigny. She often dropped the ‘th' from words, saying ‘dat' instead of that and ‘tink' instead of think. She pronounced “roof” so that it sounded more like “ruf,” and “greasy” became “gracey.” She dropped the g at the end of many words, so hurting became hurtin'.

Other changes were more in line with accents in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia or PEI, he says. Some words sounded more like they were being spoken by someone from the southern United States. Dream was pronounced duh-ream, for example.

Most people who heard her thought she was from Newfoundland or other parts of Atlantic Canada, he said.

The team also examined brain scans, and found she had damage to three different areas that are likely involved in speech.

Only 20 documented cases of foreign accent syndrome in the medical literature are accompanied by brain scans, Dr. Humphreys says. Not all of the patients have damage to the exact same areas. But it seems that when a number of regions involved with formulating and controlling speech are affected, patients can start talking with what sound like foreign accents.

It is hard to know whether Mrs. Doré will always sound like a Newfoundlander, Dr. Humphreys says.

She has had a lot to cope with since her stroke.

Her husband, who had nursed her faithfully, died from pneumonia six months later. She has moved to Windsor, Ont., where she grew up, to live with one of her sons and to be close to her brothers. She still can't use her right hand, and can't work. She says she no longer notices that she sounds different.

“My husband used to say it was the only funny thing about having the stroke,” she says.

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