{"id":509,"date":"2013-03-24T05:37:03","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T05:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/?p=509"},"modified":"2015-03-12T11:18:54","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T18:18:54","slug":"learning-to-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/2013\/03\/24\/learning-to-speak\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Speak"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Art by Allyson Healey SC ’14<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cRunning.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cRunnin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is running.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThhe ith runnin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shoes help her running.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTa thoeth help her runnin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIng.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019In.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was sitting in my speech therapist\u2019s office, practicing both my \u201cs\u201d\u2019s, my \u201cing\u201d\u2019s, and my \u201cth\u201d\u2019s. I pushed my tongue up against my front teeth, clenching them together to prevent it from slipping out and ruining my \u201cs\u201ds. I stretched my lips out sideways to get the \u201cing\u201d tone of infinitive verbs. I stuck the tip of my tongue out to produce the \u201ch\u201d part of \u201cth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twice a week through the sixth grade, I left class early and went to my school\u2019s speech therapist\u2019s office. While my peers continued their math, geography, and reading, I was relearning how to talk.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s common to hear of people who grew up with a lisp (the inability to pronounce \u201cs\u201d correctly, turning it into a \u201cth\u201d sound). On top of a lisp I grew up unable to pronounce my \u201cing\u201ds, my \u201cth\u201ds, and my \u201cr\u201ds. Often, it was so bad that my own mother couldn\u2019t understand what I was saying.<\/p>\n

I mastered my \u201cr\u201ds in kindergarten, so long ago that I can\u2019t even recall how I pronounced them. My only memory from my speech sessions then is my therapist telling me to \u201crrrrr<\/em>roar like a lion.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The sessions were both frustrating and fun. I\u2019d get to play games (my favorite being a Goosebumps card game, in which I\u2019d 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 \u201cs\u201ds. 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.<\/p>\n

I was never able to escape my speech impediment\u2014as I spoke, at dinner, in the car, in stores, my parents and siblings would constantly correct my words. I\u2019d get angry, well knowing what I was supposed <\/em>to say, just physically unable to do it.<\/p>\n

But then, graduating the sixth grade, I was told that I was done with speech therapy. I didn\u2019t need it any longer. Finally, people could understand what I said.<\/p>\n

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\u2019m born and raised in the Twin Cities. I\u2019m constantly asked, \u201cWhere are you from?\u201d, or I\u2019m told that I sound French, Eastern European, or Canadian. (I\u2019ve 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 \u201caccent.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mind these comments\u2014the only time I get defensive is when people tell me that I have a strong Minnesotan accent because they don\u2019t actually know what one sounds like! (I\u2019ll admit that I may <\/em>have a slight one, though.)<\/p>\n

\u201cAccent\u201d aside, my speech still doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t spit out correctly.<\/p>\n

My spelling is also atrocious, and although there\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019s dictionary can recognize a match.<\/p>\n

I have gone through countless moments sitting in class, face bright red, joking that \u201cI can\u2019t talk today,\u201d because I can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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 \u201centhusiastic\u201d correctly on the first try, and being able to let \u201cindistinguishable\u201d 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\u2019ve gotten older, it\u2019s gotten easier to both spell and pronounce.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve 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 \u201cindistinguishable\u201d correctly because that\u2019s the way it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up and overcoming a severe speech impediment and the insecurities that came with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-vol-4-issue-2"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2013\/05\/speechimpedspr2012.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}