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Hello people of steemopolis,
The things I wish for the most in Iife are being wealthy, becoming smarter and speaking better. If you want to speak better, they say, you have to learn to say you name right. How do one with speech impediment achieve this? Especially when you can't produce clearly the sounds in your name!
As a child, it’s normal to make mistakes producing some sounds or not producing some sounds at all. This is usually not a big deal at young age as children are just learning to speak and produce sounds. It only becomes a problem (a disorder) if a child can’t produce those sounds or keeps making the wrong sound as he gets older. Speech impediment or speech sound disorders usually starts form a young age. Most adults (like myself) with speech disorders started with the problem from a young age.
Thanks to the internet and our mobile devices, I have always preferred talking to people via text and other messaging apps like facebook and whatsapp. This is because I have a particular speech impediment. I can't produce the |s| sound. Anytime I try making the sound, it seems the people around me keep hearing the |θ| sound. This is phenomena is known as a lisp or sigmatism. The position of my tongue is responsible for this; I put the tip of my tongue between my incisors. To make this even worse, some people claim to hear the |f| sound. I love to think that it ain’t me, they probably have problems picking up sounds, lol.
Most of the time I try hard to avoid words with this sound but as English language (the plural of most words) and my name has it, I am always going to meet words with the |s| sound. This disorder doesn’t make me enjoy meeting new people because they get to ask for my name.
Someone walks up to me and say “Hey there, my name’s Mike. What’s yours?”
I say "Hi, my name is |θɔfɪjʊ|"
"What? I don't get that, spell it please”.
I can’t even call out the first letter of my name right. Knowing where this ends, I just reply "You know what, just call me Kay".
Another thing about the way I speak is me talking fast. I am not so sure if this is a disability or a 'super-ability'. Thanks to my father, my speech speed is quite fast. While talking sometimes, it feels like my tongue is out of sync with the words I’ve got lined up in my head, making me try to slow down my tongue to think of what exactly I was trying to say. This whole process makes me come as someone who has no idea what to say.
I feel uninspired to speak sometimes cause it happens that I have to either repeat my self more times than there are words in the sentence I am repeating or speak so slow that I get discouraged to continue talking. I don't even like asking questions in class. If there was a chance I’d make the |s| sound (the chance is high), I'd rather go home and read on the topic from my textbooks or search online.
I expected the classes on oral English which we took in high school to help. Behold, I improved a bit but there was a weird pause whenever I got to any syllable that has the |s| sound in it. I can pronounce some words with the sound while I’m concentrating on what I’m saying. Although clusters with |t| before |s| are a pain in the ass. Turns out that the classes on orals helped but my tongue is already used to making the |θ| sounds. I still feel there’s a lot for me to do improving my speaking skills.
Do you have (or ever had) any speech impediments? How have you coped with (or solved) it? You can talk about it in the comments below.
