June 23, 2011
Foreign Accent Syndrome is a real though hilarious malady. Simply put, some people with head injuries hurt a certain region of the brain that controls speech, leading to strange new speech patterns that sound like foreign accents. This must have been one awful root canal.
Yeah, I didn’t believe it either, but I looked it up and it is real. It doesn’t happen often, but it is documented. So in theory, someone from Nebraska can hit his head and wind up speaking like Patrick Stewart. The flip side is true too. Patrick Stewart could go in for a routine cavity fill and come out talking like Larry the Cable Guy.
Oh, how I wish that would happen. That’s hysterical. Sit back and think about it for a while. “Mr. La Forge, the warp engines have developed a negative feedback and the ventral stabilizer needs repair. Report to engineering and GIT-R-DONE!!!”
Star Trek: TNG really needed a few more rednecks, that’s for sure.
But to get back on track, reading the article brings up an imponderable question about British dentistry. The people of England are well-known for poor dentistry and bad teeth. So I submit to you this question about the British accent: is the British accent simply a matter of bad teeth? Could it simply be that the British accent is not a natural development but came about due to lousy dentists? Maybe there is no British accent, simply a neural reaction caused by head trauma.
Consider that Colonial Americans, upon leaving England and developing their own nation and dental system, within a few short generations lost the British accent.
It is a real chicken or the egg type of question. Which came first- the British accent or the bad teeth?
The question is Imponderable.
Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride 
Your theory could have some validity. Here in the colonies dental care is woefully behind the curve. No fluoridation and the universal cure for any tooth ailment is extraction. And people have English accents down here! 🙂
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All great thinkers are unappreciated in their time. Someday I’ll be proven correct.
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And I will be recognized as the visionary who saw it coming!
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Great post. I love the concept of Larry Picard, Star Guy – also, Larry Xavier, leader of a rag-tag band of mutants who hang out with him because he buys them beer even though they’re underage.
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Don’t forget Larry Scrooge in his one-man show A Christmas Carol. I love the part where the ghost of Christmas Future shows him visions of his beer can collection getting looted.
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The part at the end, when Larry leans out the window of his trailer and tells the passing boy to retrieve the largest bottle of Wild Turkey that he can find, always makes me tear up a little.
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Fantastic share, man!
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