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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>TK: >>: Some people say it was not a different accent but a
speech defect that was <BR>: common among the people of
Ephraim.<<<BR><BR>RMB: >>I'm not sure if it's possible for it
to be a physical speech defect. The<BR>sounds /s/ vs /sh/ differ only by tongue
placement. You can turn an /s/<BR>into a /sh/ making approximately the same
sound (same to my ear) by<BR>constricting the air flow pretty much anywhere
along the tongue. (I'll<BR>pause while the reader inevitably experiments...) If
they really lacked<BR>the mobility for any of those placements to be possible,
they would have<BR>lost half the alphabet, not to mention having a hard time
drinking.<<</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>>>>>></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV>I don't know why you would say that a speech defect must be either learned
(like an accent) OR the result of a physical malformation. My son
could never pronounce "s" correctly -- he had a lisp -- until he had a few
months of speech therapy when he was six. He heard everyone around
him pronouncing the "s" correctly but for some reason couldn't reproduce the
sound. The fact that the speech therapist was able to correct the lisp
meant that he did have the necessary physical equipment to pronounce it
correctly. </DIV>
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<DIV>Absent an obvious physical abnormality I don't know what causes speech
defects but they are pretty common. Possibly they are indeed caused by a
subtle physical abnormality which makes it a bit harder to pronounce certain
sounds correctly. Another cause of speech defects might be subtle hearing
problems and/or some subtle brain defect causing it to register sounds
incorrectly. My daughter confused "w" and "r" until she too had several
months of speech therapy -- not only did she pronounce words wrong, she spelled
them wrong too, swapping "r"s for "w"s! I can only conclude that somehow,
"r" and "w" sounded alike to her.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR><B>--Toby
Katz<BR>=============</B></FONT></DIV></DIV></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>