Lisping Health Article

Definition

A lisp is a functional speech disorder that involves the inability to correctly pronounce one or more sibilant consonant sounds, usually s or z.

Description

Lisping is a speech disorder characterized by the inability to correctly pronounce the sounds of s or z, known as the sibilant consonants. Usually th sounds are substituted for the sibilants. The word "lisp," for example, would be pronounced "lithp" by someone with this speech disorder.

Many children lisp at certain stages of speech development, especially when they lose their front primary teeth. Lisping is, therefore, sometimes called a developmental phonetic disorder. Frontal or interdental lisp is produced when the tongue protrudes through the front teeth when teeth are missing and is the most familiar type of lisp. Sibilant production may be interfered with in a number of other ways as well. These are all classified as lisping and include excessive pressure by the tongue against the teeth, the tongue held too far back along the midline of the palate, and a "substitute hiss" produced in the throat or larynx.

Sometimes children with functional speech disorders have problems making other sounds, such as sh, l, r, and ch. When a child cannot produce these sounds correctly, the condition is usually not considered a true lisp, but is a functional speech disorder.

Children can have a functional speech disorder as well as a developmental phonological disorder. The latter is not a matter of being able to physically make a specific sound but is a language disorder. These children have trouble organizing the sounds of speech in common patterns and may consistently replace one sound with another. For example, a child may say "wun" instead of "sun" or "doe" instead of "so."

There are four main types of lisps.

• Interdental lisp—occurs when the tongue protrudes between the front teeth and the s or z is pronounced like th.
• Dentalized lisp or dentalized production—occurs when the tongue pushes against the front teeth.
• Lateral lisp—sounds wet because the air flows around the tongue, which is in the normal position to produce the l sound.
• Palatal lisp—the middle of the tongue touches the soft palate, or roof of the mouth, when trying to produce the s sound.