Ronda Voorhis just had a home video from 1997 put on a DVD. You can hear her talking to her two young daughters.
"Going back and listening to that DVD and watching it, it was like, oh, there I am, with my kids, I wonder if they've forgotten it,” Ronda said.
She worries her daughters have forgotten the sound of their mother's voice.
"I'm from Arkansas City,” Ronda said. She lost her Kansas accent more than four years ago.
"I had the surgery on September the 13th, 2007,” Ronda said. Ronda says that's when she had extensive jaw surgery in Dallas.
"I said okay. I'm awake. I'm okay. Except that it came out in a different accent. It came out in a different voice,” Ronda said.
Then, it was time for Ronda's husband to visit. “He goes, you know, you can stop with the Mary Poppins' accent any time now. And I said, I'm not doing this on purpose,” Ronda said.
Four months passed. Ronda made a full recovery. But she could not find her old voice.
"When I open my mouth, this is what comes out,” Ronda said.
Once an instructor at Wichita State University, Ronda is now the focus of a WSU study. The research team consists of a neurologist, psychiatrist, speech pathologist, and linguist. Their diagnosis... Foreign Accent Syndrome.
"The linguist diagnosed me with an English accent from the Bath area,” Ronda said.
Ronda had never been to Bath. "I think there are fewer than 150 cases worldwide that have been reported in the literature,” Julie Scherz said.
Scherz and Tony DiLollo are on the team studying Ronda. Scherz tried to "trick" Ronda into speaking with her American accent. Scherz had her sing, because it uses a different side of the brain. Still, Ronda sounded British. And... she couldn't speak with an American accent if she tried.
"Something happened to the brain that caused that to happen,” Scherz said.
Ronda says she was told she had a stroke during her operation. Scherz says cases of Foreign Accent Syndrome don't always involve surgery.
"Because it's so rare, it's hard to draw conclusions because every person is unique. Their accents are unique,” Scherz said.
Ronda is now in her third semester as an English instructor at Emporia State University. She says her accent makes her more approachable to her students.
"It has allowed me the freedom to be more open, to talk more, to talk to strangers, to be more forward, to be friendlier to people I would have never approached before,” Ronda said.
DiLollo and Scherz have found there are more questions than answers with this syndrome.
"A lot of cases spontaneously resolve, some do not,” DiLollo said.
So, what if Ronda could go back to sounding like she's from Kansas?
"If you would've asked me that, even a year ago, I probably would have said yes, definitely, just give me back my voice,” Ronda said.
But now, Ronda is used to her new self. Her husband and kids feel the same way. She has found her true voice.
"But it took a long time of mourning for it, before it was okay,” Ronda said.
