Sharon Campbell- Rayment may have ancestors who were from Scotland, but the Ontario woman, who runs a horse riding school, has never been to the country herself.
But after a fall from her horse Malachi, Campbell-Rayment, 50, woke up to find herself speaking with a Scottish accent. Words like “wee”, “grand” and “awright” and “brilliant” suddenly came easily to her vocabulary, according to this article from the Daily Mail.
Doctors told Campbell-Rayment, she was one of only 60 people diagnosed with what has been called foreign accent syndrome. In one instance, a Brit who had a bad migraine and woke up suddenly speaking with a Chinese accent, despite never having left her home country.
Campbell-Rayment fell off her horse in 2008 and didn’t realize where the accent came from until she phoned Scotland to make a reservation to visit a B&B there while her daughter was in school. Her rolling Rs and brogue first came to public attention in 2010. Since the accident and the discovery of her foreign accent syndrome, Campbell-Rayment has turned her horse riding school into therapy sessions for others with concussions.
h/t: Daily Mail and National Post