Accents are funny things, aren't they? They usually give away a lot about where a person is from, but they can also mutate of their own accord. Usually that happens if someone moves regions or countries when they're younger, but there are exceptions to that rule.
Twenty one-year-old gaming addict Jamie Callis from Barry, Wales, is one of those exceptions - he managed to lose his accent because he would spend up to 21 hours a day playing on consoles and chatting to people online who were mainly from the USA and Canada.
Speaking to ITV, Jamie said that not only did he not have any friends in real life, but that he felt unable to confide in his family about his problem. He also suffered from severe depression, which made him extremely anxious about interacting with people.
"It was very tough," he said. "I couldn't walk through town without putting headphones on because I didn't want anyone talking to me.
"I would go into lessons in college shaking because I was so nervous. I spoke to my lecturer about going into counselling, which I really needed."
Before getting counselling, however, Jamie would spend most of his waking hours in front of his screen playing games for about 'eight hours on a school day to 16 to 21 hours on a weekend'.
He would apparently sleep for an hour and then wake up to play games again and talk to people in other parts of the world who were awake because of the time difference.
He told Wales Online: "I'd spend up to four in the morning speaking to Americans and Canadians online and there is a possibly that it has affected my accent."
Jamie's depression began at the age of 19, when he tried quitting computer games altogether - a much harder task than he'd imagined.
"My entire teenage years were taken up with my family being constantly concerned about me, but I didn't really see it as an issue until I was 16 or 17.
"It affected my grades, my social life, my connections with my family which I've only just started repairing now."
To that extent, his mutated accent was the least of his worries, and Jamie is now trying to inform others about the dangers of gaming addiction.
"People are using these video games for things like escapism to basically ignore the real world," he explained. "When you're doing that you don't really associate it as being a problem - you see it as a tool that's helping.
"In reality, it's something that's having a really negative effect on their lives so they should be going to a GP or psychologist."
Featured Image Credit: Media WalesTopics: UK News, Technology, UK, Wales