Hi @lidivampire and @daisymarie2k11
People get lisps because of some part of their mouth, face or throat being an unusual shape, usually larger than it should be.
We have some experts in speech here, so they can probably go in to more detail.
Making any speech sound is all about pushing air out from your lungs. The shape that we make with our lips, where we put our tongue and how open our mouth is, all change the sounds we produce.
When we talk about a lisp we normally mean someone who has trouble with specific speech sounds, sounds we call fricatives. Fricatives are the speech sounds that sound a bit like a TV when the signal is really bad (hissing sounds). ‘s’ like in ‘sip’ is an example of a fricative. To make a ‘s’ sound you normally push your tongue so that the tip touches the bit of gum just behind your teeth. If you instead put the tip of your tongue just behind your teeth and try to say ‘sip’ you will have a lisp.
Lisps are quite common but it is often not all that difficult to teach someone where to put their tongue and stop them having a lisp, provided they don’t have other speech difficulties.
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