Haway bwoy!

"A Geordie woman has apparently developed foreign accents after waking up following a stroke.

Linda Walker awoke in hospital to find her distinctive Newcastle accent had been transformed into a mixture of Jamaican, Canadian and Slovakian".

It's a constant source of bemusement to me that when non-Geordies attempt the accent it almost invariably sounds either Jamaican or Indian...

But foreign accent syndrome isn't really something that should be made light of - it's obviously a traumatic experience for those affected. That this woman "feels like a different person" just underlines the extent to which accents - and particularly strong ones like Geordie - are an integral part of personal identity.

May she soon be back talking in that marvellous semi-incomprehensible dialect I love going home for.