Texas Woman Says She Awoke From Common Jaw Surgery and Was Stunned to Hear Sound of Her Voice

A Texas mother doesn’t sound Texan at all after a rare neurological disorder gave her a British accent.

Lisa Alamia, a mother of three, underwent jaw surgery six months ago in order to correct an overbite. But the surgery did more than just change her jaw — it changed her speech, according to KHOU-TV.

Lisa Alamia (Image source: KHOU-TV)

“People who don’t know me, they’re like, ‘Hey, where are you from,’” Alamia told KHOU. “I’m from Rosenberg, [Texas]. They’re like, ‘Where is that?’ I’m like, ‘Right here in Rosenberg.’ ‘Oh, you’re from here? How do you talk like that?’ So that’s where the whole story comes up.”

Alamia said that she didn’t publicly talk about her accent change for a few months because she was worried that people would brand her a liar or judge her in some other way.

“I didn’t know the reaction I was going to get from people,” she said.

But her friends and family, especially her children, are open to her new voice.

“I thought she was joking with me,” Alamia's oldest daughter, Kayla, told KHOU. “But then she showed me that the doctor had told her she was diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome. Then I was like, ‘Oh, Lord.’”

A Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital doctor told KHOU that less than 100 people in the world were diagnosed with the syndrome in the past 100 years. Since the diagnosis, Alamia underwent a litany of tests by her neurologist to try to learn more about the accent — but to no avail.

Alamia plans to start speech therapy soon.

(H/T: KHOU-TV)