I see that a Czech speedway rider who suffered head injuries in a collision has provided doctors with the latest example of that rare but fascinating condition, Foreign Accent Syndrome, writes Frank McNally.
The rider crashed during a race in Glasgow and was knocked unconscious by another bike. When he came too, he was able to speak perfect English - "like a news reader", his team manager said. But the effect was short-lived. Once he recovered his memory, ironically, the rider lost his linguistic skills.
His case suggests exciting new possibilities for the learning of languages. Indeed, it would seem to underline the hitherto unsuspected wisdom of those generations of school-teachers who saw blunt-force trauma as an educational tool. One envisages future Linguaphone sets that come complete with mallets, for example, so students can beat the stuff into themselves.
But it's not so simple. FAS - I'm referring here to the aforementioned medical condition, rather than the State agency - does not miraculously confer language abilities. It is thought that the Czech rider had some previous exposure to English, which was temporarily unearthed by the knock to his head. As for its more typical symptom, it does not really cause the sufferer to speak his native language with a foreign accent, either. It's just that an injury to a specific part of the brain causes the patient to lengthen syllables, alter pitch, or mispronounce sounds. Listeners then mistake the combined changes for a different accent.
And the condition can cause big problems while it lasts. One of the earliest known cases was a Norwegian girl who suffered shrapnel wounds during an air raid in 1941 and was afterwards ostracised by the community because she was mistaken for a German.
THE REALLY INTERESTING thing about FAS, I think, is that it might shed light on the causes and treatment of Dart Accent Syndrome - the condition that has plagued Ireland for a generation now and can no longer be dismissed as a passing fad.
The very name "Dart accent" expresses the naïve optimism of a bygone time, when it was still thought that the condition affected only people who lived in proximity to Dublin's coastal rail line - where it was first diagnosed - and that the outbreak could be contained there.
We now know that DAS occurs far beyond the reach of the capital's suburban rail network - even in parts of the country that have no train service at all. In fact, if the durability of Dart-speak has achieved one good thing, it was to remove any lingering association between the accent and the provision of quality public transport - a stigma that may in the past have undermined the case for a Dublin Metro.
On the contrary, the accent is now chiefly synonymous with AA Roadwatch bulletins. It could be just as accurately called the Car Lobby accent, because the massive rise in car ownership over the past 15 years has greatly increased the opportunities for young women to say "ryndabyte" and "sythbynd" on the radio.
But that would be to confuse cause and effect. We might as well blame the Dart accent on climate change, on account of that glamorous RTÉ weather presenter who keeps predicting "clydey" conditions over Ireland. (If you live in Glasgow, especially near the river, you could reasonably expect weather conditions to be Clydey. But surely our lower latitudes should protect us from that sort of thing here.)
Anyway, the issue is whether FAS can throw any light on the real causes of the Dart accent and perhaps open the way for a cure. And the first question that arises is this. Is it possible that, about 20 years ago, a generation of young Irish people - mostly but not exclusively female - were exposed to some form of head trauma, from which they have never recovered? One thinks of heavy metal music and the "head-banging" associated with it. This has always been a predominantly male pursuit. But could there have been a feminine equivalent in the mid-1980s?
Or could sports be to blame? Games that involve heading the ball (soccer), or head-butting opponents (rugby) are also male-dominated. But is it possible there was a change in the physical exercise curriculum in girls' schools about 20 years ago, entailing some form of cranial stress? Or then again, might there be a non-violent explanation: something that produced the same effects as a blow to the head? I'm clutching at straws here (yes, we noticed - Ed). But could the Dart accent have been caused by, say, some dangerous new ingredient in hair products?
I have previously proposed in these pages that the accent could be eradicated with the help of much the same techniques that the State once used to promote Irish. My idea then was that if we made it compulsory in schools, gave a 10 per cent bonus to students doing oral exams in it, and had a Government department to encourage its use, Dart-speak could be rendered extinct within a generation.
In the light of developments, I am happy to admit that this was misguided. It seems far more likely that the Dart accent is a symptom of a medical condition. Our first step must be to find out what exactly caused it. Then, who knows? Maybe we can reverse the process by replicating the initial head trauma on those affected - in laboratory conditions of course. It's surely worth a try.