What does it feel like to wake up one day speaking with a foreign accent from a country one has never visited? Why does someone wake up doing this? This book seeks to portray the broad and diverse experiences of individuals with a rare neurological speech disorder called Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS). Through a combination of personal testimony and scientific commentary, the book aims to shed unprecedented light on the understanding of FAS by elucidating the complex links between how the brain produces speech, how listeners perceive speech and the role that accent plays in our perception of self and others. The first part of the book provides a comprehensive introduction to FAS and covers a number of key subject areas, including: • The definition and phenomenology of FAS • A history of research on FAS • The causes and psychosocial consequences of FAS • A guide to further reading and a glossary of specialized terms. The chapters in part two provide a unique insight into the condition through personal testimony and accounts from family members. This collection of 28 testimonies from across the world underlines the importance of listening carefully to patients explain their cases, and in their own words. The final section contains a questionnaire for use by clinicians to support case history taking. The authors are two leading global experts on FAS, and this is the first volume of its kind to provide such a broad and comprehensive examination of this rare and poorly understood condition. It will be of great interest to practising clinicians in neurology, psychiatry, psychology and speech and language therapy/pathology, as well as students in health disciplines relevant to neurorehabilitation, linguists and also to families and caregivers.

"Anatomy & physiology for speech, language, and hearing, fifth edition, provides a sequential tour of the anatomy and physiology associated with speech, language, and hearing. It has been developed keeping today's students in mind and provides ancillary materials that greatly enhance learning. This fifth edition refines the presentation of the anatomy and physiology of the relevant topics under discussion, as well as acknowledges the advances that have occurred in the different fields of study."--Préface.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: B, University of Wales, Bangor, course: Speech and Language Disorders, language: English, abstract: After a brain injury, e.g. a stroke, areas of the brain can be damaged permanently. Thus, a lesion on the brain can have long-term consequences for the concerned person, such as paralyses, decreased reflexes, altered sensory perception, memory deficits, and/or speech and comprehension impairments. The latter may include aphasia (i.e. affection of Broca’s or Wernicke’s area causing an inability to produce or comprehend language), apraxia (impairment of voluntary movements), or foreign accent syndrome (also known as altered-accent syndrome). The foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a disorder that is still not completely researched, since, according to Katz et al. (2008: 537), its “symptomotology and underlying bases are poorly understood.” Nevertheless, there are some cases that have been described and examined. This essay deals with the main speech characteristics of FAS and the relative extent to which segmental and prosodic features are affected in this disorder. Therefore, the syndrome will be defined and described first. In the succeeding section, the segmental and prosodic features of FAS are taken into consideration. The last part contains the classification of FAS with respect to other speech and language disorders, such as apraxia, aphasia, and dysarthria, whether it is a mere sub-type of these disorders or if it should be treated separately.

The clear and easy way to get a handle on the science of speech The science of how people produce and perceive speech, phonetics has an array of real-world applications, from helping engineers create an authentic sounding Irish or Canadian accent for a GPS voice, to assisting forensics investigators identifying the person whose voice was caught on tape, to helping a film actor make the transition to the stage. Phonetics is a required course among students of speech pathology and linguistics, and it's a popular elective among students of telecommunications and forensics. The first popular guide to this fascinating discipline, Phonetics For Dummies is an excellent overview of the field for students enrolled in introductory phonetics courses and an ideal introduction for anyone with an interest in the field. Bonus instructional videos, video quizzes, and other content available online for download on the dummies.com product page for this book.

Why language ability remains resilient and how it shapes our lives. We acquire our native language, seemingly without effort, in infancy and early childhood. Language is our constant companion throughout our lifetime, even as we age. Indeed, compared with other aspects of cognition, language seems to be fairly resilient through the process of aging. In Changing Minds, Roger Kreuz and Richard Roberts examine how aging affects language—and how language affects aging. Kreuz and Roberts report that what appear to be changes in an older person's language ability are actually produced by declines in such other cognitive processes as memory and perception. Some language abilities, including vocabulary size and writing ability, may even improve with age. And certain language activities—including reading fiction and engaging in conversation—may even help us live fuller and healthier lives. Kreuz and Roberts explain the cognitive processes underlying our language ability, exploring in particular how changes in these processes lead to changes in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. They consider, among other things, the inability to produce a word that's on the tip of your tongue—and suggest that the increasing incidence of this with age may be the result of a surfeit of world knowledge. For example, older people can be better storytellers, and (something to remember at a family reunion) their perceived tendency toward off-topic verbosity may actually reflect communicative goals.

This is a collection of 48 highly useful case studies of children and adults with communication disorders.

What is involved in acquiring a new dialect - for example, when Canadian English speakers move to Australia or African American English-speaking children go to school? How is such learning different from second language acquisition (SLA), and why is it in some ways more difficult? These are some of the questions Jeff Siegel examines in this book, which focuses specifically on second dialect acquisition (SDA). Siegel surveys a wide range of studies that throw light on SDA. These concern dialects of English as well as those of other languages, including Dutch, German, Greek, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish. He also describes the individual and linguistic factors that affect SDA, such as age, social identity and language complexity. The book discusses problems faced by students who have to acquire the standard dialect without any special teaching, and presents some educational approaches that have been successful in promoting SDA in the classroom.