And Then Things Got A Little Lispery.

It was bound to happen sooner or later: The dreaded pronunciation lesson. Nearly 9 months of teaching and I’d managed to avoid it. But it had never entirely left my mind; I knew it was coming.

I finish my week early Friday evening with a couple of our most advanced students. They’re well behaved and actually like learning, so I enjoy my time with them. One of the required activities in each unit at their level is a review of basic pronunciation of (and ability to differentiate between) similar English sounds. The students are provided with three sentences, each missing two words. The missing words are a pair which contain similar English sounds (thigh/sigh, Sue/Zoo, etc.). The objective is to listen to a CD rhyme the sentences off and fill the correct word in each blank, then read the sentences back to me. Given the level of these student's English, the activity is fairly elementary and bordering on ridiculous. Hence, I usually pass on simply playing the CD and instead try to build conversation topics out of the material provided; a challenge when the sentences are often even less intelligible than “She let out a sigh as she cut the chicken thigh”.

The aforementioned sentence brings me to Friday’s pronunciation activity, which focused on differentiating between “s” and “th”. Given that I don’t properly differentiate between those sounds myself, my teaching this lesson as usual would have ineffective; hilarious, but ineffective, inappropriate, and probably unprofessional. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said either “mouse” or “mouth” in context relevant to the lesson during one of my other classes, only to have a student think that I said the other one and end up horribly confused. I’m perfectly happy lisping my way through the English language; I just have enough sense not to intentionally teach a generation of Korean students to develop my speech impediment. It’s been pointed out to me that many of them are going to do it anyways, on account of it being difficult to produce such a subtle difference in sound that apparently doesn’t exist in their own language. Still. Some of my students have an excellent ear for language, and it would be wrong of me to teach them incorrectly for no better reason than my own amusement.

It pained me to do it. I couldn’t go through my usual turn-the-pronounciation-lesson-into-a-discussion plan. I really didn’t want to do it. But I took one look at the lesson, which clearly stated “Differentiating between ‘s’ and ‘th’” and enthusiastically spurted: “Yeah, that’s not going to happen... Today we’re going to do something fun and different and listen to the CD!” My two students looked very confused. I didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth: that Barbie Teacher sounds much like a 5 year old.

Barbie Teacher Brings the Lisp to Korea

Anybody who has ever taken the time to actually listen to the words that fly out of my mouth will have noticed that I have a slight lisp. This has always been the case. I received speech therapy for it when I was younger but, like most things with me (college majors, careers, men), it simply didn't stick. I can speak without a lisp, but this would be akin to you intentionally speaking with a lisp at all times. It would be forced. It's not natural, so I don't do it. I stopped having any interest in what I sounded like to other people quite some time ago. There is no known physiological excuse for my lisp. As far as I'm aware, I don't have an enlarged tongue or unfortunate jaw properties. This is just how I happen to roll. Barbie has a lisp, and unlike almost everything else in my life, the lisp sticks.

A few of my friends still get a kick out of hearing me say "physics" or "sixth", words which are like poison to me, but I expect my friends to mock my quirks. You haven't truly been initiated as a Friend of Barbie until you've spotted and mocked The Crazy. Some do this within 5 minutes of meeting me; others never quite make it.

One of my more darling friends brought it to my attention prior to departure for Korea that I was going to create a population of Koreans who speak English with a lisp. I advised them that I would do my best to bastardize the English language while in Korea.

I had more or less forgotten about all of this until today. As one of my obligations for an evening class I am required to go through an activity called "pronunciation clinic". This redundant, yet necessary activity entails that I ensure that the students can recognize the difference between similar sounds. Today we discussed "s" and "z". While my lisp doesn't prevent me from differentiating between "Sue" and "zoo", this activity did require my rhyming off a long list of S-words. I quickly recalled my conversation with friends from home and saw The Funny in this. It's really only a matter of time before I'm going to be sucked into discussing TH-words versus S-words. And that? Is going to be a whole lot of Funny.

All of this said, it's unlikely that my students are going to pick up my lisp-ery pronunciation of the English language. Even if they did, their accents are such that you wouldn't really notice anyways. Hence, my plan to infiltrate Korea with Canadian accents and lisps is half defeated; back to getting my students to use "eh".