I'm vewwy cuwwious about this.
January 3, 2012 9:07 PM Subscribe
Are there any named speech disorders equivalent to rhotacism but involving difficulty in pronouncing another specific alphabet letter?
I'm thinking of a name for the inability to pronounce /m/, /n/, etc. Is the letter "r" the only letter in the English alphabet that has its own speech disorder? (I know a lisp often renders one unable to pronounce the letter "s", but other sounds can be affected, not just the sound of a single specific letter.)
I'm thinking of a name for the inability to pronounce /m/, /n/, etc. Is the letter "r" the only letter in the English alphabet that has its own speech disorder? (I know a lisp often renders one unable to pronounce the letter "s", but other sounds can be affected, not just the sound of a single specific letter.)
I knew a guy who had difficulty pronouncing the "shr" combination in words like "shrimp" or "shrew". He would consistently drop the "h". Thus, "shrimp" would become "srimp".
He had no trouble with "sh" on its own, though. "Shoe" and "ship" were perfectly pronounceable. It was just when the "r" was added to the string that all hell broke loose. So, it appears to be r-based, but the "r" itself is not affected. Weird.
I have no idea what that condition might be called, if anything.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:05 AM on January 4, 2012
He had no trouble with "sh" on its own, though. "Shoe" and "ship" were perfectly pronounceable. It was just when the "r" was added to the string that all hell broke loose. So, it appears to be r-based, but the "r" itself is not affected. Weird.
I have no idea what that condition might be called, if anything.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:05 AM on January 4, 2012
Since a very young age I have had a hard time pronouncing L's correctly. I also have a stutter, but I think these two are unrelated (unless discomfort surrounding pronunciation of L's helped create the stutter when I was very young).
posted by zachawry at 5:12 AM on January 4, 2012
posted by zachawry at 5:12 AM on January 4, 2012
I knew a guy who had difficulty pronouncing the "shr" combination in words like "shrimp" or "shrew". He would consistently drop the "h". Thus, "shrimp" would become "srimp".
I always associated this with a gulf coast accent. I could well be wrong.
posted by cmoj at 8:56 AM on January 4, 2012
I always associated this with a gulf coast accent. I could well be wrong.
posted by cmoj at 8:56 AM on January 4, 2012
I don't know if it is considered a speech disorder, or present in speech disorders, but lambdacism is linguistically parallel to rhotacism for L sounds. That wiktionary page references iotacism, which I had never heard of before.
posted by eruonna at 10:03 AM on January 4, 2012
posted by eruonna at 10:03 AM on January 4, 2012
Response by poster: Fascinating stuff! Somehow I stumbled upon this and now I'm going to spend even more time reading about speech and phonology tonight.
posted by cp311 at 10:57 PM on January 5, 2012
posted by cp311 at 10:57 PM on January 5, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by vasi at 11:12 PM on January 3, 2012