“I’ve become resigned to speaking like this,” he says. The 17-year old boy’s mother tongue is Dutch, but for his whole life he has spoken with what sounds like a French accent.
“This is who I am and it’s part of my personality,” says the boy, who lives in Belgium – where Dutch is an official language – and prefers to remain anonymous. “It has made me stand out as a person.”
No matter how hard he tries, his speech sounds French. About 140 cases of foreign accent syndrome (FAS) have been described in scientific studies, but most of these people developed the condition after having a stroke.
