A woman who went to bed to sleep off a migraine got a ‘canny’ shock when she woke up with a Geordie accent.

Verity Went, 26, has only visited the North East once on a caravan holiday to Whitley Bay aged 13, but now talks like a ‘propa’ Geordie.

The barber, from Penkridge, Staffordshire, had a local Midlands accent when she went to bed, but woke up sounding like a true Tyneside-r.

Verity suffers from functional neurological disorder (FND) which affects the nervous system. Migraines and seizures and common symptoms, and her accent change is believed to be another side effect.

“When I woke up my speech had gone, and I’m used to that (because of my FND) so I didn’t think much of it,” she told the Echo.

“I kept trying to speak and then all of a sudden it came out how it is now.

“It didn’t sound like Geordie to me at first, I was just like ‘I sound really different’.

“I went to the doctors and she was speechless – she was like ‘oh my god!’.

“It was my mam who said that I sounded like a Geordie.

“It took me quite a while to get used to it. I was never able to do a Geordie accent before.

“When I was 13 I went on a caravan holiday in Whitley Bay and my sister had a boyfriend in Hartlepool at the time, but it was only about four days so not long enough to pick it up.”

She was diagnosed with FND a year before the accent change, in October 2022. She had been suffering migraines since the age of eight but was only diagnosed after seizures started.

Since the accent change she has stopped having seizures, but still suffers bad fatigue and paralysis.

Verity, and her friends and family, have spent the last few months getting used to her new accent, which now comes to her naturally.

“It comes so easy and saying thing is just so natural now,” she explained.

“I say mam now. I used to say ‘mom’ but I struggle to say it, it’s like there’s a block in my brain.

“When I told my friends there were creasing at me. They were like, ‘I don’t believe you, stop putting it on’.

“At first I was so upset because I felt like I had lost myself. The new accent has changed my personality and now I’m more confident. I much prefer it and the person I am now.”

Verity posted about her new accent on social media and has been blown away by how supportive Geordies have been.

She said: “I had a lot of negative people online, even people with FND, saying I was putting it on, but every single Geordie has been so nice.

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“People are saying, ‘she’s spot on she can’t be lying’. Someone said I was an adopted Geordie now and I was one of you.

“It’s nice because I don’t want people thinking I’m taking the mick.”

Charity FND Action describes the condition as a “problem” with how the brain and nervous system function, and how the brain fails to send or receive messages correctly and impacts how the body responds to tasks such as movement.