Do people with lisps know they have lisps? If so, is it possible for them to correct their lisps through independent effort?
People with lisps do know they have them.
I know that when young it is possible to correct a lisp. I don’t know about older folks though.
my brother is my cite
An acquaintance of mine from university had a lisp as a child. It would only re-appear when she was really nervous. Yes, she knew she had a lisp. She’d taken some kind of speech therapy to correct it, so I never heard it. She just told me about it because we had to do a presentation in a lecture hall, and public speaking made her nervous enough that it might re-appear.
And it did, but only barely noticeably. If she hadn’t told me ahead of time I probably would’t have even noticed.
I don’t think it’s possible to make a blanket answer to either question. I’m sure there are many people aware of their lisps as well as many who do not realize they have one. The cause of the lisp would affect the ability of the aware person to correct it.
I had a thick lisp when I was seven. I wasn’t aware of it until my teacher put me in speach therapy. The existance of speach therapy indicates that in some cases it is possible to correct a lisp with training and practice. In my case, however, the lisp was present because I had no front teeth (as is the case in many seven year olds). When they grew back my lisp was greatly reduced, but I still had people telling me I sounded like Cindy Brady when I was 13yrs old. This is not something a 13yr old wants to hear.
Now in adulthood, I don’t notice a lisp. When I ask people if they think I have one, they say I do not. So I suppose I must have corrected it.
Yeth.
I am tho thorry.
I had a lisp as a result of tongue-thrusting during my ‘s’ phonetics as a child. I never noticed - it was just the way I talked, and only after my speech therapist showed me pictures of my immature but already ruggedly handsome smile did I notice the unmistakable pink of my tongue mashing the back of my teeth.
Had I grown older without correcting it, however, I’m sure it would have been noticeable. I have some minor verbal idiosyncrasies still which don’t receive a lot of comments but I’m cognizant of them.
I have a slight lisp. Cant hear it by myself except if I listen to it on a tape.
I dated a girl whose mom had a lisp, and I brought it up one time. She got very offended and insisted that her mom did NOT have a lisp. They were so much alike I can only imagine that her mom also thought she didn’t have a lisp.
(princ "Yes
")
As is clear from earlier responses, the answer is “depends on the person.” I have an acquaintance who didn’t realise that he had one until he was in second- or third-year Drama, when his speech teacher told him. Nobody had thought to inform him before that, I guess.
That’s wrong: PRINC doesn’t do escape characters and in Common Lisp escape characters don’t look like that anyway. You probably just want (princ “Yes”) or maybe (format t “Yes~%”) (I forget precisely what PRINC does about newlines).
Note that Schemers can rot in Hell for all I care. 
I had a lisp as a child; yes, I knew I had one.
I have a lisp that I learned from my twin sister (I spoke normally until that, according to my mother). I sure know I have it, it bothers me and I try to speak without it, but the more agitated or concentrated I am, the worse the lisp. Sigh.
I don’t get it. Were you separated until a certain age or something?
I had a lisp and some related issues, and went through a few years of speech therapy to correct them in elementary school. I still sometimes hear myself slip, especially when introducing myself - for some reason, I’ve always tended to lose the R. (Lots of people thought that my name was “Lisa” at first when I was a kid.)
I grew up with my sister in a very close relationship. My sister had the lisp from the beginning, I didn’t, but adopted her s-sound, apparently to conform (we’re talking about kids around four years old here.)