Lisp

Several people have a lisp. Drew Barrymore actually has a lisp, yet she has learned how to get past it and move on with her professional life. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani also suffers from a lisp, yet he was able to achieve political greatness despite his condition. People with a lisp are unable to pronounce certain words. They usually have problems pronouncing certain verbs and syllables. Usually the letter "s" will give them a hard time. Having a lisp can be embarrassing, especially in professional situations. You want people to take you seriously and respect you, but it can be hard if you struggle to pronounce some of the words.

For a lot of people, a lisp is actually a physiological disorder. It can also be caused from swollen adenoids or when you have a stuffy nose. Several people will suffer from a lisp if they need to wear retainers or have braces. The tongue will hit the roof of the mouth differently, causing the words to sound distorted. Some people actually have a lisp because it gets them attention. They start this in their childhood and carry it onto adulthood. It is also fairly common to develop a lisp after a traumatic incident in your life. There are 4 main types of lisps:

• Interdental - This type of lisping is caused when you talk and your tongue protrudes beyond your teeth.
  
• Dentalised - This type of lisping is caused when the tongue touches your front teeth when you talk.
  
• Lateral lisp - This is the most common type of lisping. This is when you have a hard time pronouncing certain letters, nouns, verbs, and sentences. Usually the "S" and "V" come out sounding like a different letter or they come out muffled. Quite often your speech will sound slurred or it will sound wet and spitty. What happens in this instance is that some air will escape from the sides of the tongue. You may even find that you have excess saliva in your mouth when you talk, making it harder for you to talk.
  

• Palatal lisp - This final type of lisp comes when you have a hard time making certain sounds escape the mouth. Your tongue will have difficult coming in contact with your palate and the words will come out sounding differently than you expected them to.

Lisps can be frustrating for many people because even the best speech therapists cannot always cure them. Many people that develop a lisp during childhood will carry it with them throughout the rest of their life. You can work on your lisp by practicing rhymes and words that you have trouble pronouncing. Think of the popular movie, My Fair Lady, and the extensive speech therapy Eliza Doolittle has to undergo. She has to practice saying some words with marbles in her mouth so she can learn how to enunciate them. While putting marbles in your mouth can be dangerous, you can use this same method with mini marshmallows and other food. This is a great way to help control your lisp as your saliva is focused on the food and you have to practice speaking slowly and learning how to enunciate your words.

The best way to control your lisp is to attend speech therapy lessons. When you go to speech therapy, you will undergo several different methods to help control your lisp. Normally you will work on mastering one sound at a time. Once you are able to pronounce this certain sound properly, you can move onto the next sound. Depending upon the severity of your lisp, speech therapy can take a few months to complete before you are able to pronounce words and sentences properly.