Learning to Speak

Art by Allyson Healey SC ’14

“Running.”

“Runnin’.”

“She is running.”

“Thhe ith runnin’.”

“The shoes help her running.”

“Ta thoeth help her runnin’.”

“Ing.”

“’In.”

I was sitting in my speech therapist’s office, practicing both my “s”’s, my “ing”’s, and my “th”’s. I pushed my tongue up against my front teeth, clenching them together to prevent it from slipping out and ruining my “s”s. I stretched my lips out sideways to get the “ing” tone of infinitive verbs. I stuck the tip of my tongue out to produce the “h” part of “th.”

Twice a week through the sixth grade, I left class early and went to my school’s speech therapist’s office. While my peers continued their math, geography, and reading, I was relearning how to talk.

It’s common to hear of people who grew up with a lisp (the inability to pronounce “s” correctly, turning it into a “th” sound). On top of a lisp I grew up unable to pronounce my “ing”s, my “th”s, and my “r”s. Often, it was so bad that my own mother couldn’t understand what I was saying.

I mastered my “r”s in kindergarten, so long ago that I can’t even recall how I pronounced them. My only memory from my speech sessions then is my therapist telling me to “rrrrrroar like a lion.” Today, I am amazed that I learned that sound in only one year; most people attend speech therapy for only a couple of years, but I had to go until junior high school to master the other sounds with which I struggled.

The sessions were both frustrating and fun. I’d get to play games (my favorite being a Goosebumps card game, in which I’d have to make up my own scary story as I drew more cards), and the teacher always gave me candy at the end, which made the other kids jealous. But amid all the games and candy, I still had to force my mouth into unnatural motions, spitting the same words out incorrectly over and over again. Once, I declared to my teacher that I would simply start re-wording everything I wanted to say to avoid words with “s”s. The next thing I wanted to say was about my sister. Defeated, I gave up this new approach as quickly as it had been declared.

I was never able to escape my speech impediment—as I spoke, at dinner, in the car, in stores, my parents and siblings would constantly correct my words. I’d get angry, well knowing what I was supposed to say, just physically unable to do it.

But then, graduating the sixth grade, I was told that I was done with speech therapy. I didn’t need it any longer. Finally, people could understand what I said.

But in years since, the way I speak has continued to be something of an anomaly. No matter where in the United States I am, I get a comment on my voice multiple times a month. Fellow St. Paul natives are surprised when I tell them I’m born and raised in the Twin Cities. I’m constantly asked, “Where are you from?”, or I’m told that I sound French, Eastern European, or Canadian. (I’ve gotten all of these.) And often, when I reveal that I had a bad speech impediment as a child, people will say that they had noticed and wondered about my “accent.”

I don’t mind these comments—the only time I get defensive is when people tell me that I have a strong Minnesotan accent because they don’t actually know what one sounds like! (I’ll admit that I may have a slight one, though.)

“Accent” aside, my speech still doesn’t feel perfect. Some days it seems like I constantly am stumbling over my words, my tongue going spastic and my enunciation all wrong. I have difficulties with pronunciation more than most people; in class, I usually am afraid of reading something out loud, just because there might be a word that, no matter how many times I try, I can’t spit out correctly.

My spelling is also atrocious, and although there’s no way to prove a correlation, I believe this is also related to my speech problems. At least once a paragraph, if not more often, I will misspell a word so incorrectly that Microsoft Word doesn’t have any suggestions for me. I will slowly pronounce the word over and over, respelling it and respelling it, trying to find a combination of letters that is close enough to the word I want that Microsoft Word’s dictionary can recognize a match.

I have gone through countless moments sitting in class, face bright red, joking that “I can’t talk today,” because I can’t say a word correctly. Before I open my mouth, I think my words over, finding synonyms in order to avoid the possibly difficult word I really want to use. I have so many memories from high school, already insecure and self-conscious enough, feeling as if my words and speech were alien sounds, separating me from everyone else.

It’s been hard for me to find a way around my insecurities. I pay attention to the little victories in life, such as finally being able to spell “enthusiastic” correctly on the first try, and being able to let “indistinguishable” flow smoothly off of my tongue. (I actually was saying it out loud right now, and it took me almost ten tries to get it right.) As I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten easier to both spell and pronounce.

It seems ironic that I am an English major after all of these difficulties with language, but at times I wonder if I love literature so much precisely because of what I’ve gone through. Like painting, or playing an instrument, language is an art I have to work to create. Not only is it rewarding to pronounce “indistinguishable” correctly because that’s the way it’s supposed to be, but because words are beautiful when they are said the right way. And I remind myself that many people love the uniqueness of my voice. And so I trudge on, word by word.