American woman wakes up with British accent after dental surgery

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A 56 year old woman from Oregon woke up with a British accent, as well as a new set of dentures after undergoing oral surgery.

Karen Butler had the operation in November and woke to find that her American accent had transformed into a British accent; the voice remained with her for weeks after the procedure and has now morphed into a more Eastern European sounding accent.

Speaking to the Oregonian newspaper, Mrs Butler said that her family thought it was funny at first but when her original accent did not return, they began to get more concerned. Health professionals were baffled by the case and offered a number of different possibilities as to what had happened.

Doctors have now given Mrs Butler a preliminary diagnosis of Foreign Accent Syndrome, an extremely rare condition, which usually results from a serious accident or head injury. This case is particularly peculiar because oral surgery is not linked to the syndrome and there is no evidence of a link between the drug which was used to sedate Mrs Butler and strokes.

Butler said that the situation is very strange but it has given her the confidence to be sociable; she said that she was just a normal person before but now people are interested to hear her story and this has helped her to be more outgoing.

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