Speech Impediment - Tumblr Posts

...I don't wanna make fun of people with speech impediments but becoming a teacher with a very strong lisp is gonna make the kids eat you alive

Reminder that

Inability to pronounce R is called rhotacism.

Inability to pronounce S is called sigmatism.

Inability to pronounce L is called lambdacism.

Dyslexia is a difficult word to write if you have dyslexia.

And the phobia of long words is possibly the longest word I've come across: Hippopotomonstroses-quippedaliophobia.

Why are people with speech disorders and dyslexia forced to suffer more than they have to?? I hate it here.

God knew I would be too funny for this world if I could correctly pronounce my R’s

Shout out to people with incredibly nasally voices, shout out to people with lisps, shout out to stutter-ers, shout out to people who can't say certain words "correctly", shout out to people who can't pronounce certain letters and syllables "right", screaming and hooting and hollering for people who's speech is impacted by neruodivergence or disabilities!

if anyone has approached you at any age about speech therapy, if you've ever been made fun of, just know I love you from a very respectful distance, I'm waving at you from across the street, and you're my cup of tea and also you inherently deserve respect!!!

Apparently when I say Massachusetts my speech impediment becomes visible???

having a (fairly minor) speech impediment is unfortunate but sometimes it’s funny because most of the time i can mask it okay but sometimes it slips out and makes me sound like i have a jersey boston hybrid accent (i am born and raised in the american midwest aka nowhere near either of those places) and people look at me like ???

idk it’s more of an inconvenience than anything but occasionally it’s good for my own personal entertainment

I've never had the chance to share this so ig I'll do it here.

So, I have a speech impediment. Yay.

Specifically a stutter and I've suffered bullying centered around my stuttering for years on end. (For some reason it was always by girls. Guys used to think my stutter was cute for some reason it's not btw).

My sutter is the prolongation of words and the block

I.e How areeeee you and I'm fin____

I wanted to share this for anyone else who's living with a stutter. I've noticed a few things.

I actually only stutter on vowels (lovely that every word has a vowel in it huh?)

I pretty much stop breathing when I talk (it's like my brain can only focus on one thing at a time)

Reading does not increase or decrease my stuttering.

I sometimes add extra words or pronounce words differently to avoid stuttering.

My stutter decreases dramatically when speaking to people who don't cut me off.

Now, I'll go through and explain them to help anyone who may have similar issues.

For 1, I noticed around four years ago that I actually only stutter on words that have a vowel sound. I sat down with myself and talked for a bit and found that every word I stuttered on, it was at the vowel sound.

Shockingly, even words that begin with a vowel sound I stutter over, I'll give details on that later.

So, the best way I've learn to handle this is to stop when I know a word has a vowel and I stutter on that word, so I'll say something like:

Everything is all ready done.

Separating them into two words seems to prevent me from stuttering.

2 might also just be my anxiety, but for the sake of this post, let's say it's not. I noticed I'm usually out of breath when I talk. I do talk fast, but I mean like I just ran a marathon out of breath from just saying a simple sentense.

The best way I can describe it is like when you're singing a song. You try and sing the full line as the singer does, but most of us haven't trained our lungs so we end up breathless by the end of it.

I still do this, but it's gotten better as I've learned to breathe from my diaphragm when I talk instead of my chest.

3 I'm really saying for anyone trying to help someone with a stutter. This does not help someone to calm their stutter. As a kid, my parents sat me down and assumed if I read aloud I would learn not to stutter, but it makes no difference.

My advice is to just be patient. That person knows they stutter, let them take their time and they'll eventually get out what they need to say. You're in no rush to hear what they say, so just let tham go at their own pace.

One last thing about this. DO NOT try and finish a sentence for them. It's bad enough we have a stutter, but if someone tries to fill in the sentence for us, our self esteem goes 📉📉.

For 4 (lol) this is a thing I developed and it works pretty well. This is the detail I was going to get into. So, sometimes I stutter over the word it, no Pennywise.

So, to stop that from happening since it is used a lot, I started saying "I T is like." Now, I don't say that in public, but I do with my family and the word is simple enough that no one is thinking too hard on what I spelled out.

But this is why I usually don't refer to things by their proper name (so if anyone here ever becomes my real friend, please know I'm not saying things wrong, I'll just stutter otherwise).

Lastly, 5. I would assume this is the same for everyone regardless if they have a stutter or not. When someone is cutting you off, it makes you rush your words, cut your words off, and stutter. So it gets worse for someone with a stutter.

I have very rarely encountered people who didn't try and cut me off because I paused to take a breath or held out a word. It's true that the anticipation of someone cutting you off sometimes makes you stutter.

I have my stutter under control a lot now, but it did take me a while to get to this point. So, for anyone out there who has a stutter, try and find out what makes your stutter tick and go from there to find ways around it.

This has been a PSA about stuttering, thank you for reading 🍂

Sorry, but last thing, since I'm a writwblr, I wanted to add how to properly write a character with a stutter.

We know t-the (repeating sound) stutter is a real one, but it's normally used for someone who's simply nervous. Someone who actually stutters would stutter at any point in time and sometimes in different ways (eg me having two versions of a stutter).

Also, know where your character's stutter comes from. Mines happens to be hereditary and environmental as I frequently get cut off and thus rush my words to get them out faster. It's also just kind of the way I am since I'm very fast paced and have a hard time "taking things slow"

It's also good to detail a tick or habit your stuttering character may have, like they stop talking and shake their head when pausing their stutter.

Oh, and it's true, cursing eliminates stuttering. There needs to be some testing done on that.