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A holidaymaker says she’s lost ‘part of her identity’ after suffering from a stroke and waking up with a Thai accent.
Cathy Warren, 29, went on holiday to Fethiye, Turkey, to celebrate her 28th birthday with friends in September last year.
While walking to dinner on September 27th, Cathy says she was hit with a wave of dizziness before her legs stopped working, and she was unable to walk any further.
Cathy says she hadn’t experienced any other symptoms other than a ‘bad headache’ earlier in the day, which she blamed on heat stroke.
Her friend called the hotel reception for help, and Cathy was rushed to the hospital where she underwent several scans that revealed she’d had a stroke.
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A day later, she woke up in hospital with the left side of her body paralysed and was stunned to hear that her Hampshire accent had changed to a Thai one.
In March 2025, Cathy was diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome – a rare condition where a person’s speech takes on an accent different from their usual one, and which people can think sounds ‘foreign’.
Cathy has since undergone speech therapy, but says that her accent still doesn’t sound the same.
‘I used to have a British voice, but I woke up and my accent was different,’ she said.
‘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.
‘The doctors don’t promise that it will come back – it’s really rare. I feel like I lost part of my identity.’
Cathy spent a month in a hospital in Turkey before she was declared fit to fly by doctors and was allowed to return to the UK in October 2024.
Recognising a stroke
S – Ask the person to SMILE
T – Can they TALK? Ask if they can speak a simple sentence.
R – See if they can raise both arms
If they can’t do any one of these, call 999.
Not all sufferers share the same signs, according to the NHS, other symptoms include
- complete paralysis of one side of the body
- sudden loss or blurring of vision
- confusion
- difficulty understanding what others are saying
- problems with balance and coordination
- difficulty swallowing (dysphagia)
- a sudden and very severe headache resulting in a blinding pain unlike anything experienced before
- loss of consciousness.
Once back in England, she spent a further two months as an inpatient in hospital, followed by three months of rehabilitation, where she had to learn to walk again.
‘I needed three people to walk at first, it was probably five minutes per day for a month,’ she said.
‘I had to learn to walk more with different aids, first a tripod, then a crutch, and now I can walk independently.’
Though she’s healing now, Cathy said her voice will likely never be what it was before her stroke.
One English woman who suddenly woke up with a Welsh accent says she wants her old voice back.
The problem is so bad that Zoe Coles, 36, feels anxious leaving her own home in Stamford, Lincolnshire, because she ‘doesn’t fit in any more’.
Zoe was diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) in January 2022.
This means there is a problem with how the brain sends and receives signals. Because of this, Zoe has ticks, memory problems, slurred speech and pain in her legs.
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