|
11 wordies list
Leave a comment, citation, or
private note
|
first listed by:
seesee (43 words)
appears in these lists:
seesee's Words, by seesee
zetadiction, by koldewyse
bella, by avivamagnolia
I am : talking, by vega
|
Years ago I learned something very useful from C.S.Lewis. (The Last Battle in the Narnia series, I think.)
In the book one character whispers to another while on a night-time reconnaissance: "Get down, thee better."
Lewis then explains that she says this not because she has a lisp but because she knows that the sibilants are the noisiest part of any whisper and the sound most likely to give you away if you're trying to go undetected.
And ever since I have always made a point of lithping when whithpering. Or at least avoiding words with sibilants in them.
Tell Veronica the secret of the boy you never kissed
She's got everything to gain 'cause she's a fat girl with a lisp
She sticks up for you when you get aggravation from the snobs
'Cause you can't afford a blazer, girl, you're always wearing clogs
(Expectations, by Belle and Sebastian)
"Lisp is over half a century old and it still has this perfect, timeless air about it."
I would like to know of a link to a page which lists - in matched pairs - all of the sets of fairly common words in the English language (or at least all of the 1, 2 or 3-syllable ones) WHICH ACTUALLY EXIST, and which sound like completely different words (real words, commonly used in conversation, including slang) - when spoken with, and without, a lisp.
Examples:
pithy/pissy
moss/moth
Thin/Sin
myth/Miss
Lass/Lath
Bath/Bass
Meth/Mess
Truth/Truce (truss?)
Questionable:
Sauce/Thoth (okay, so names of ancient mythical deities are sometimes allowed in a pinch)
Cloth/Claus (claws?) (not a soft "S" sound)
oath/Oz
booze/booth
prissy/prithee
Strictly speaking (or perhaps lisply speaking…?), only soft "th" sounds - as in thin or three - should be included, not hard "th", as in then, or there. But sometimes, even inveterate punsters have to settle for less than perfect…