It’s no surprise that children can be cruel. To an extent, they are just learning how to communicate with the world and part of that experimentation is to find out what being mean or cruel is all about. That’s fine, I guess.
But what a surprise that linguists are cruel. As if to please themselves, they have given names to every speech impediment–names that the afflicted can’t pronounce. That is borderline evil.
“Lisp,” for instance. If you have a lisp, you are forced to make a linguist chuckle whenever you say, “I need help with my lithp.” But it doesn’t stop there.
People afflicted with a glottal stop can’t say the word glottal. It comes out more like how Cockneys or Vermonters say bottle: “Boh-ull.”
Sibilant S? Inability to pronounce S’s without making a whistley sound.
Or take rhotacism, perhaps one of the cruelest of linguist jokes: Can’t say the letter R. It’s the classic Homestar Runner voice–Whotacism.
Who’s that hanging out with rhotacism? Why it’s lalling! That’s the little guy who keeps you from saying words with L’s and R’s. It’s the Tom Brokaw voice where the tongue goes wide on an L instead of lifting the tip.
In fact, the L’s come up again with Lateral where an L sound is made with air going around the tongue. Those with the problem would sort of say “hlateralhhh”.
I will admit that a few disorders slip past, such as dysphemia which relates to the timing of words or syllables. But to make up for that, they have harelip which comes with the dreaded labial plosive.
The king of all of these, though, is the term that covers all of lisping-dome. This is the champion of cruel linguist jokes because those with a lisp will always pronounce sigmatism like Sylvester. Thufferin’ thuccotash, that-th quite a thigmatithm!
For shame, linguists. For shame.
– m
It’s not like linguist is a real job anyway. Reminds me of how half of all the hot girl reality show contestants or NFL cheerleaders are all “speech therapists” It’s really their socially acceptable way to continue their high school cruelty.