Foreign Tongue

Foreign Tongue

It’s not easy being a foreigner. Certainly not easy being an immigrant. While Kathy Woodrow is neither of those things (for now), she is profoundly lonely, and her passion for wine is a “coping mechanism with a cork” behind which lurks a drinking problem. It all comes to a head at a speed dating event, where, after a few too many glasses of bad Pinot and a heavy pour of her trademark cynicism, Kathy has a dramatic fall. The head injury lands her in a coma.

When Kathy wakes up, she speaks with a thick Bosnian accent. According to the baffled neurologist, she has “foreign accent syndrome” — a real but extraordinarily rare condition, with only 78 known cases in recorded history.

And just like that, Kathy becomes a foreigner. Not in the legal sense. But in the deeply inconvenient, identity‑shattering, “why is the barista asking me where I’m from?” kind of way. Now a foreigner — to herself, to her friends, to the world she thought she knew.