Bearing Disability: Living with a speech impediment

I have a speech impediment that was likely caused by the brain damage at birth. It affects certain letters or sounds: S, Sh, L, Y, R, W, Th, F are the ones that I know about. It’s frustrates me. My first and last name has two of these sounds and has often resulted me using the phonetic alphabet.

What is the Phonetic Alphabet

It is a list of words that are used to help people communicate. I think its original purpose was to make it clear what letter a person was saying when they sounded similar. Most people use it or try to use it when they have to give their post code (which usually has 3 or 4 letters).

The NATO Phonetic Alphabet is the most used version, but there are others. I use this one when on the phone. I use it so regularly, that I know most of the letters except Z; the British Language doesn’t use that letter much anyway. My phone conversations go something along the line of this:

Speaker: “Hello, what’s your name?”

Me: “First name is Sierra, Hotel, Alpha, November, November, Oscar, November. Last name is Whisk….”

As you can imagine, it is a long process having to spell my name like that. And not every phone secretary understands it. I often apologise and explain that I have a speech impediment when people don’t understand. I’ve tried to use other techniques too.

Shannon, like the Irish River, W- as in the beech resort.

Sometimes this is a quicker way; sometimes I get the person who has never heard of the river or the beech resort. I get frustrated with myself and have thought about changing my name—even my niece was able to say my name better than me at the age of three. But I also like my name… It’s a complex one.

What can be done?

I suppose the one thing that would help with phone conversations would be for every phone receptionist to learn the phonetic alphabet. I doubt that will happen though.

But it is a useful skill and when the DWP (department for work and pensions) don’t understand it when you ring the disability line, there is something wrong. Surely they would get a lot of people with speech impediments call them – especially the way they assess people now.

Conversations with others

But it isn’t just my name. I struggle to say yellow, thankfully that colour is barely mentioned but sometimes it is and it is just frustrating. Then there are other Sh words, people with names that are any of my struggling letters. Smetimes, I feel like an idiot for not being able to say these names or these words.

I know it isn’t the case, but I still get that feeling.

I have yet to find a technique for conversations, because it isn’t really practical to use the phonetic alphabet in the midsts of a conversation. Most people are understanding of my speech impairment although I did once have this ‘friend‘ who insisted that I wasn’t trying hard enough and that I was using my speech impairment as an excuse, but I didn’t listen to them.

I used to have speech therapy in school, which did help a little with my “L” sounds, but they could never get me to say my Sh or S, W or R… in the end, she told me to carry a name tag everywhere. Right or wrong, I suppose she was running out of time, I was in year 11 when she said that, plus my school had decided to cut down on support again so she didn’t finish the full year.

Confidence vs speech impediment

I’m very self-conscious when I speak, especially when speaking to someone new. Although, I don’t think people realise this. I dread words coming up that start with any of those letters – as I don’t seem to have as much problem if the sound is in the middle or the end.

I have also realised that it seems to be worse when I am tired. My words seem to slur more and some days I get tired quicker than usual.

Sometimes, when I have to repeat myself because the other person doesn’t hear, I wonder if it is my speech impediment and I get frustrated with myself. And the more someone doesn’t understand, the more I think it is getting worse.

Speech impediment is just a struggle for me, generally.

What do I find helps?

Well, I kind of have taken the speech therapist’s advice. When I go somewhere, have appointments or need to give my name for any reason, I have my work ID with me so that they’re able to spell my name if they need to. Previously, I used my Student ID for the same reasons.

Other than that, I have no idea what can help me say ‘yellow‘, ‘the‘, ‘them‘ or similar. Speech therapy helped me with my L sounds but couldn’t help with these sounds.

If I am really struggling with a word, I’ll try and substitute it for another, but that isn’t always possible. I just have to be content that most people know what I am saying I guess until I find some more techniques.

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