Hi, so I'm an adult who had years of speech therapy as a child, but I was forced out of the program after 4 years without ever being able to make palatal sounds. To this day, I make them with my back teeth. (Like, teeth closed, tongue flattens out and presses the entire hard palate and against both sides of back teeth, tongue blocks air from moving forward so it's forced from back teeth.)
The problem seems to be that my palate is pointed rather than rounded. (IE, a "v" instead of a "u.") I don't know how detrimental it truly is, but it was the reason cited by two different speech therapists to explain why I couldn't lose my lisp. Combine losing a molar on either side, and it's pretty bad.
So, I took a course in Chinese in college, but the professor could never understand me if I tried to say the "x" or "q" sounds. Tone wasn't much of a problem, oddly enough... Anyway, I gave up after that because we just couldn't figure out how to make my speech comprehensible.
Well, I'm an ESL teacher now, and we have Chinese families in my school receiving services. I want to be able to have at least small conversations with these children and parents, but I cannot for the life of me say, like, the days of the week.
So... Is this an insurmountable obstacle to speaking Chinese, or might it be something that could be worked around (also factoring my American accent)? Like, if I can't speak it, I'd rather spend my time learning to read and write the characters at least rather than waste time and energy on something that I'll never be able to use.
(For an example with my lisp, whenever I would say, "Do you want cheese on that?" I would get, "What did you say? Quiche??" Or just blank stares. Also, whenever I had to give listening exams in the past to people studying English, if I had to say "chat" "jam" "shed" "true" or "vision", not a single student ever got the correct answer.)
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