I’m a little curious, how aware of your lisp are you in everyday communciation? Does your inner voice speak without a lisp?
I wish I could remember…
I had a lisp as a child, for which I endured a school year’s worth of speech therapy. Ah, the joys of 2nd grade. “Alright, class, it’s time to get out your crayons! AUDREY, IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO GO TO SPEECH THERAPY…”
It worked, though.
I’ve always wondered about adults with a lisp…not in a mean way, more an idle curiosity as to why they still have it.
Yeth.
Actually, it’s not that bad anymore, though it was when I was a kid. I still struggle with words with lots of Th and Sh sounds in them. Like thesaurus. Or thesis. Or Thessalonica. Those words don’t come up that often in real life, but I’ve played Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” a couple of times and and she has a few references to her former lover Theseus, which was fun. And when, as Social Secretary of a theatre company, I introduced the monthly “Thirsty Thursday Socials”, I was just asking for trouble.
I supposedly have a small lisp. I am completely unaware of it. I don’t generally think in words, but when I do, that inner voice does not have a lisp either.
I also had to go to speech therapy as a child. Since I am certain my lisp was directly related to my missing front teeth, I don’t know if my response is helpful, but I did not think with a lisp. I was well aware of my lisp, because it was either lisp or whistle, and I found the lisp to be much less annoying. Until I had the psycho speech therapist I had (who actually hit me with my book on more than one occasion). I now am loathe to hear anyone with a lisp – no matter how nice you are, if you lisp, it grates my last nerve. I do not lisp now.
I had to go to speech therapy as a child, for a lisp and some related issues. (Countless people thought that my name was “Lisa” at the time.) Some words, especially at the beginning of sentences, still come out kind of oddly sometimes, though I don’t have a lisp per se anymore.
I don’t usually have an inner voice. My thoughts are 98% purely visual or conceptual.
I also had a lisp as a child. In contrast to Doctor Who, people tell me they’re surprised when I tell them that, but I hear it very clearly, and I feel like I struggle a bit with words like thesaurus.
I had to go to speech therapy in elementary school, but I hated it and remember how stupid and condescending it was. I also had to miss French class, and I begged my parents to let me go back to French, which they did (while a language with no S would be nice, French at least has no TH to get it confused with :)) The therapy didn’t help immediately, but it did at least teach me how to properly position my tongue. Eventually that changed from being something I could do when I was really concentrating to being second nature. But I still feel like my tongue is too big to fit behind my teeth to make an “s” sound, if that makes any sense.
Edited to add that “synthesis” is without a doubt the evilest word in the English language. I refused to answer questions in science classes that would involve that answer.
I had a lisp as a child, but my aunt decided she was sick of it one day and grabbed me by my face and didn’t let go until her impromptu lesson was learned. I always tried really hard not to do it after that. Still have trouble with some words, though.
My daughter has a lisp and goes to speech therapy now.
I got so fed up with people repeating back what I lisped that I practised over and over in the mirror, making my tongue force out an ess sound. I can’t put my teeth together in the real ess way, but I can pass the air over my tongue to make a passable sound. I still lisp more clearly when I’m tired and I love to speak Spanish (although I can’t say much) - lisp city! Very relaxing.
Now and again someone picks up on it and imitates me, asking me to say lispy things. I don’t think with it.
I’ve had a lisp my entire life, and a bit of a stuttering problem at times. I hated the first year of speech therapy, and refused to go the next year. If I concentrate and speak very slowly, I can enunciate my “s” and “th” sounds correctly, but I tend to be a very fast (and very quiet) talker.
Now that I think about it, I’m amazed anyone can understand me! 
Years of speech therapy as a child and young teen has practically erased any trace of a lisp, although I’m told I have a distinctive voice/ tone. I speak deliberately and almost slowly and when I’m dead-on-my-feet exhausted or have had a few too many, I can hear the lisp creep into my speech. That’s why I tend to get really quiet when I’m tired and/ or tipsy and speak in monosyllables…I hate my lisp. I’m far too old for it to be cute.
Just as a curious postscript…
I didn’t have a lisp til I became best friends with a girl who did. This was at the age of 5 or 6.
I don’t recall if it was just influence or whether I consciously thought “I should lisp too!!” but regardless, I developed a lisp that refused to go away.
Until 2nd grade and months of speech therapy.
I’m thirty years old now, and I still wonder if it was voluntary or just mimicry that became habit.
Since 2nd grade I’ve never had the slightest hint of a lisp…which is contrary to people I’ve met who’ve struggled with it the same way stutterers face a daily battle with their tongues.
I should perhaps mention that I am wickedly good at mimicry/accents/imitations…to the point that I’ve convinced random strangers I’m from another country…even when/if they are FROM that country/region…so looking back, I kinda think I adopted my friend’s speech patterns to the point that I couldn’t “go back.”
Is there a name for a Human Parrot?
All I know is that as a kid, I’d call into radio stations to request songs, and if you had a charming foreign accent…French/British/Italian etc., you always got your song played AND they put you on the air.
Hmm. Now I’m more curious about people who don’t have internal monologues running. I thought this was a standard human brain feature? 
^^^ Yeah, me too.
If you don’t think in words, what do you think in? Pictures? Or…?
Visual thinking at Wikipedia.
I don’t know how trustworthy this source is, but it’s more detailed then Wikipedia.
Oh man, that’s probably a whole 'nother thread.
Short story: I don’t think in words. And I don’t think in pictures. Unless I do.
Right now, I am composing this post. I am trying to precisely describe the way I think. I am being very conscious of the words that I am using to try to be as accurate as possible. So, right now, I am consciously thinking in sentences. This, by the way, is almost the only time I do this. I never have an internal monologue (i.e. “Doctor Who! You idiot! Why don’t you think in words? If you thought in words, you might get a raise at work!”)
If I was being creative or focusing on details of an object, I would probably think in pictures. If you asked me to describe someone I had just seen, I would probably try to visualize them.
But, in general, neither is the way I think. I guess I am a visual thinker, but I tend to think in …er… fleeting representations. For example, if I heard my dog downstairs, I would recognize that she was downstairs. Not because I would picture her there, and not because I would tell myself, “the dog is downstairs,” but because my abstract mental concept of my dog is now in the downstairs place in my mind.
Also, my brain tends to be filled with competing thought bubbles. I hardly ever (or hardly can) focus on one single concept/idea/etc. For me, thinking in words or pictures seems to dominate my mind. That is, it’s not natural unless I consciously focus on doing so. Right now, for example, I am trying to describe my thought process but I am also thinking about whether I need to take a shower, going to the grocery store, and a book I picked up at the library today. Simultaneously. Typing this post, however, is the most currently active thing in my brain.
This is hard. You all should really try to describe your thought process. It’s like nailing Jello to Shamu mid-backflip.
Reading back over my post, the above description of my thought process seems much too deliberate and conscious. It’s not really like that. I just think. Sometimes it’s words. Sometimes it’s pictures. And most times it’s not. I’m guessing this is not that much different than anyone else.
I feel like I just ate a magic mushroom and I’m trying to describe what purple tastes like. Anybody understand (at all) what I’m getting at? Anyone? Bueller?
ETA: on preview, looking at Risha’s link, I think spatial thinking might be part of what I am describing so badly. I’m not autistic for the record, but I am ADHD. If it matters.
In the interest of science, I read through Risha’s links and found a crude quiz for “Are you a visual spatial leaner” PDF link. As a baseline, I was a “yes” to all but number 16. I guess I am probably a visual-spatial thinker. I never knew that about myself!
…
I feel the same. 
I don’t speak with a lisp but more than one person including my mother has said that I speak strange. What the hell does that even mean? I tried to get specifics but no go.
I did well in school. No ridicule from my classmates or teachers, hell I was even the teachers pet in 6th grade.
Oh well.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. What is the “real ess way” that people put their teeth together in? I don’t lisp and I make ess sounds by passing air over my tongue, the way you describe.
My thought processes work a lot like Doctor Who’s, actually, though I scored a few points lower than he on the quiz, and seldom have more than one actual thought going at a time (though I am often registering things happening around me at the same time). I don’t have ADHD, which may be the difference for the latter.
I think that you actually described it well as you can in English, Doctor.
The words “visual spatial” are kind of a misnomer, I think. I don’t generally think in pictures anymore than I do words, though it is my default before resorting to words. It’s all conceptual. To expand on his example, I have a mental construction for “downstairs” and a mental construction for “dog”, and they would both contain each other.
Right now, I’m thinking in words as I try to compose the words to this message. A “thought bubble” of what concepts I’m trying to convey is sitting “right underneath” the stream of words, feeding it. That bubble doesn’t contain any words or pictures. Since I’m actually concentrating on my thoughts, I’m aware of the “picture” of what’s happening around me (the visual of the screen and what’s around the edges of it, the feel of the fan blowing air on me and the dog slumped behind me, the sound of the fan and my husband snoring from the bedroom). Normally I would register all of that, but it would not trigger any sort of thought. There are also conceptual thoughts filling in the existence of my other dog on the loveseat behind my screen (though in all honesty, the loveseat concept didn’t show up until I tried to construct my sentence about the dog, other than an awareness of his current height), and the “concept” of the first dog is attached to that weight on my back, and the concept of “bedroom” is attached to the sound of my husband.
My mind feels pretty empty a lot of the time, actually - a lot of empty space with a few small “thought balloons” hanging at various locations in it. Much of the time those balloons are just me registering what’s happening, not actually thinking about it.