Expert: Taylor Sheppard - 12/27/2008

Question
Hello =]
I'm a freshman, musical theatre major in college right now, but I have a bit of a problem. I have a slight speech problem, mainly in the pronunciation of "sh" or "ch". Not everyone picks up on it, but it's definitely there. I visited a speech therapist, and she said it's occurring because my tongue is too close to the back of my teeth. So my question is, how should I proceed?

Being in college, I don't have a car or money for intensive speech therapy at the time. Is there any good material out there that would help with this?

Thanks so much!
-Sarah

Answer
Hi Sarah,

Oh the monetary woes of the college student!

There's good and bad news: The bad: there always seems to be money woes even after college! The good? There are resources available to college students and non-college people who have financial difficulties.

The trick is doing the footwork to find them!

In college, help can be gotten through the medical services of your school, as well as through their speech pathology department if your school has such a department. Now, this is just my opinion from having been a college student a thousand years ago, but the medical services aren't always the best, because after med school, barring financial difficulties, the best doctors aren't going to decide to work at low-pay for a school when they could work in private practice. But, any help is a start!

Just out of curiosity, are you Hispanic? A common problem for native Spanish speakers is the issue you describe. My girlfriend is Hispanic, and although her mother can speak without accent, she hung around friends that did not speak without accent, and somehow picked it up. So, when she is tired or really relaxed, she will say "Shicken" for chicken and "Share" for chair. Now she doesn't tend to do the opposite as much, "ch" for "sh", but it's there.
Curiously, if I speak with my Aussie friends or those with a strong Southern accent, I can start taking on an inflection in short order.
I have a tendency to speak "stoner-ese" (lol!)-dropping the ends of words and underpronouncing consonants. A little monotone as well.  

There are DVDs or CDs you can find online, there are speech classes (that may go toward your electives in school) and of course, the dreaded "P" word..........PRACTICE. Working with a camera or tape recorder and working on it by doing readings that emphasize the area you stumble on. That's what the speech paths would make you do. Short of shortening your tongue or moving your teeth, compensation is the key. Stand in front of a mirror and speak and listen...you will have to memorize the feeling (position) of your tongue when you pronounce words correctly. Eventually, you will develop "muscle memory" like typing or playing guitar, piano...whatever, so that you will re-learn how to do it. Unfortunately, it takes many time the effort to un-do learned behaviors, but if you want it bad enough, it can happen!

I was an aspiring musician years ago, but I found that I could sing everything BUT tenor, which unfortunately, is what most songs require for a guy. I wise friend of mine, a country-rock singer/songwriter named Rusty Wier, advised me something rather simple (as is his nature) years ago: "find out what you CAN do, and do it!"
Instead of focusing on the negative, turn the lemons into lemonade!

Sometimes stars have taken their "faults" or imperfections and made them a trade mark. Comedians who impersonate people would have a hard time doing so if people didn't have characteristics they could exaggerate to mimic! Speech impediments, a large nose(Barbara Steisand)or twisted nose (Owen Wilson)or mumbling (Clint Eastwood)...all fodder for comics.

The thing is, you may not be as bad as you perceive. The great thing about getting older is you learn to not be as self-conscious about things. I don't know if your teacher pointed this out or you picked up on it.

We had a class in acting where we were in a small group in the laboratory theater. We had to walk our normal walk in front of the class and then the group would critique what they noticed about us. To this day, I don't know if the exercise was so much for the person or the group! It taught us to observe people on the street and pick up on how to portray them. Many skits on shows like Saturday Night Live are based on exaggerations of real people encountered in public. The "Soup Nazi" from the Seinfeld show was a real guy that they met.

The bad thing about the class was it made you a little self-conscious about how you moved. It's a tricky thing. When is a good time to become self-aware? You want a child to learn that there are germs that they need to be careful to keep out of their bodies by washing, being careful what the expose themselves to, etc. This needs to be learned early on. However, if done incorrectly, or to a sensitive kid, he may just well end up like Howie Mandel, seeking intense therapy for an unreasonable germ phobia. Major damage!

However, if you rid yourself of any "imperfection" you may well make yourself so neutral that you become "un-unique". What if everyone spoke the same, walked the same, acted alike? Pretty boring.

Hope this helps you,

Best, Taylor