#this isn’t discoraging anyone from giving him a lisp oh my god please do I love characters who lisp so much

[can-a-tuna-fish]

I can and will write a multi page essay about the way people write and portray Richard Goranski’s lisp in fan content and why I don’t like it. this is sort of just one aspect of it, guys please actually consider how a lisp works before writing/playing him with one I’m begging you.

Rich has a tongue between teeth lisp (as opposed to the type of lisp that happens when air escapes from the sides of your teeth), meaning he makes the “sss” and “zzz” sounds with his tongue “out” (touching the top row of his teeth instead of resting behind them).

The way the tongue between teeth sort of lisp works, you only make the “th” sound on certain words. sun, spoil, and toss all require you to use the “sss” sound to pronounce them, meaning they would come out with a th lisp. The same goes for “zzz” sounding words like zebra, puzzle, and lazy. Plus some words with C like icing, voice, and circle, since in this context the C actually makes the same sound as an S.

Not all words that have an S or C in them make the speaker lisp though, which is where I think people get confused about it and write/play him with a silly sounding or inaccurate lisp. Words like share, show, and sheet make a “shh” or a shush sound, which usually wouldn’t have a th lisp attached to it :))

Something I recommend if you’re ever playing him or just generally any character who lisps, be conscious not to speak with your tongue out the entire time. I see a lot of the people who play him just keeping their tongue between their teeth throughout entire sentences while trying to recreate a lisp, and it changes the pronunciation of ALL their words which a lisp wouldn’t do.

Also, when writing a lisp, it’s really repetitive to read anything that constantly emphasizes it. You don’t have to write “thally thellth thea thellth by the thea thore” it’s difficult to read and makes the content less accessible overall, it’s okay to write the words normally and THEN emphasize how they’re spoken, one or two mentions of a lisp is enough to get the point across without constant repetition. Plus then it’s not crowding up your writing and taking all that effort to figure out.

Honestly all I’m saying is to think about how speech impediments work before trying to write/mimic them, genuinely though at most it mildly annoys me so there’s no anger or anything behind this post. It’s something I like talking about + I like rich so he gets to be part of this too.