Brit woman woke up with Thai accent on holiday and may never speak with old voice again
A woman who was on holiday in Turkey claimed to wake up with a different accent after suffering a stroke.
Cathy Warren, from Basingstoke, Hampshire, said that her life 'changed forever' while she was on a girls' holiday abroad back on 27 September 2024.
While in the city of Fethiye, Cathy and her friends decided to go for a meal to celebrate her 28th birthday, but while walking to dinner, she was hit with a feeling of dizziness before her 'legs stopped working' and she couldn't walk any further.
She had a 'bad headache' that same day, which the Brit believed was heat stroke, but after being rushed to a hospital, scans revealed that the now-29-year-old had actually suffered a stroke.
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Cathy woke up in hospital with the left side of her body paralysed and bizarrely, with a Thai accent instead of a Hampshire one.
She was officially diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome in March 2025, claiming that she has 'lost part of her identity' as a result.
According to the NHS, Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare speech disorder where someone's speech takes on a different accent from their regular one, which can sound 'foreign', with most cases coming after a stroke or 'other brain injuries or diseases'.
Now halfway through her recovery, the financial administrator fears that her British accent will never return, explaining: "I'd been sunbathing that day and it felt like I had heat stroke.
"I went to bed and I had a really bad headache, so we just thought it was heat stroke.
"We were walking to dinner and we'd just taken some pictures... and suddenly I couldn't walk."
After getting help from a receptionist, Cathy was eventually taken to her room as they assumed she was drunk, but after 'crawling on the floor' when she needed the toilet, an on-site doctor was called, leading to her transfer to a hospital.
Cathy has since undergone speech therapy, but she admitted: "I don't think my voice is ever going to be the same. I used to have a British voice but I woke up and my accent was different.
"My mum's from Thailand so she has a Thai accent. I would say that the accent I have now sounds like hers - it's Thai, it's foreign."
Reflecting on the condition, she said the doctors believed it's because of her mum and that the incident took place overseas.
Cathy explained: "My mum's from Thailand so she has a Thai accent. I would say that the accent I have now sounds like hers - it's Thai, it's foreign.
"The doctors think it's because of my mum, she has this accent as well, and because it happened abroad.
"I finished speech therapy now but my voice has stayed the same. The doctors don't promise that it will come back - it's really rare. I feel like I lost part of my identity."
After a month in a Turkish hospital, she was declared fit to fly home, returning to the UK in October 2024, which was followed by another two months as an inpatient in hospital before three further months of rehabilitation, where Cathy had to learn to walk again.
The Brit said she needed help from three people to walk at first, for just five minutes everyday, over the course of a month.
"I had to learn to walk more with different aids, first a tripod, then a crutch and now I can walk independently. I'd say it took 10 months [until Summer 2025] to get to the point where I could walk independently," she explained.
Joshua Nair