Sunday, February 19, 2023

"US cancer patient developed 'uncontrollable' Irish accent"

Fortunately for him, that is probably the accented English that is easiest on the ears.*

From the BBC, February 17:

A US man developed an "uncontrollable Irish accent" after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, despite having never visited Ireland, researchers say.

The North Carolina man, who was in his 50s, was presumably afflicted with foreign accent syndrome (FAS), the British Medical Journal reports.

The rare syndrome gave the man, who had no immediate family from Ireland, a "brogue" that remained until his death.

Several similar cases have been recorded globally in recent years.

The case was jointly studied and reported by Duke University in North Carolina and the Carolina Urologic Research Center in South Carolina.

"To our knowledge, this is the first case of FAS described in a patient with prostate cancer and the third described in a patient with malignancy," said the report's authors....

*From Manchester's The Manc, January 7, 2022:
A YouGov ranking of the best and worst accents in the British Isles has got people arguing online
The controversial 2014 poll rated accents based on how 'attractive' or 'unattractive' they are.  

Did you see that YouGov dug up its old poll on the best and worst accents in the British Isles and it sparked quite the row online this week?

Well, in case you missed it, the market research and data analytics firm took to Twitter to respond to a tweet that intended to “start a civil war” by asking people for their takes on what the “worst accent” in the UK was, and so decided to shared the results from its controversial 2014 poll – which rated accents based on how attractive or unattractive they are.

The ‘Southern Irish’ accent was found to be the most appealing, according to those who voted, claiming a net attractiveness score of +42....

....MUCH MORE (including the least attractive)
 
And when you zoom out to other English-speaking jurisdictions (Yahoo News, Australia, February 2021):
The most annoying accent in the world revealed

A global survey has found which accents are most appealing and most annoying to both men and women. Thankfully, the Australian accent did not make the top of the most hated list!

A survey of 300 men and women by The Knowledge Academy asked participants to listen to five minutes of the same narrative recorded by English-speakers.

The researchers determined which accents were more preferred or hated by how long the volunteers were able to listen to the recordings for before switching off.

Unsurprisingly, the American accent on both men and women were chosen to be the most annoying with men turning the recording off after just one minute and 26 seconds and women switching off after just one minute and 17 seconds.

The Irish accent, however, was voted most favourable among women with the group listening to four minutes and 30 seconds of their speaker. When it came to men, the Scots won out with men listening to around four minutes and 35 seconds of a Scottish woman talking.

South African accents on women were the second most annoying with an average listening time of one minute and 44 seconds, while the Canadian accent on men came second with a similar listening time of one minute and 42 seconds.....

....MUCH MORE