Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Lisp

Commercials suck. Well most of them do anyway. Especially the ones that are out now in the time leading up to Christmas. It makes me want to turn off my tv. Why do they have to repeat last year's crappy commercials. As if they didn't bore us out of our minds with the same crap a mere 12 months ago.

Today's rant is about "the lisp" in Milka's chocolate Santa commercial. Not only is the commercial itself incredibly tacky it also features a kid with a lisp. Anyone who knows me also knows that I have a thing for semantics, phonetics and pronounciation.

Where I come from kids were sent to see a speech therapist until their lisp was barely audible anymore or completely gone. Nowadays I come across so many kids that have a lisp and when you speak to their parents they just wave it off and say that it will straighten itself out.

Ahem, no it won't.

That lisp is going to stay and as they get older it will just make them sound a little less credible. I have friends who have the cutest lisp when they had a few drinks and their speech is slurred and funnily enough the lisp did even make it on tv years ago. One of the major German tv channels features a female news anchor with a heavy lisp and somehow I just can't take her seriously. Though I love watching when she's on just to hear her say words that contain plenty of the letter "s"...as in Schadenfreude :o)

That is her. You can probably make out the lisp even if you don't speak German.


Here's a clip of a parody....not far from the original :)

8 comments:

AutoSysGene said...

All of the sudden Hope is lisping a bit. If it keeps up she will be going to speech therapy...

Dr. Hottie lisps a bit...and I still think he's HAWT..yeah, that's kind of wrong, huh?

Melisa Wells said...

LOL, if you just concentrate on watching her mouth move, it's even more entertaining. :)

I was one of those kids who went to speech therapy for a lisp (and fixed it) when I was little. My 13 yo has an ever-so-slight lisp (barely audible, probably. But I know it's there). When I asked his teachers in elementary school what we were going to do about it, they said it wasn't "bad enough". Hmmm.

kat said...

Melisa And here I was wondering if you would send Hope to Dr. Hottie LOL.

Melissa The hubby has a slight lisp too when he gets excited or upset. I love it...he's so cute when he does it.

M. said...

i had a lisp growing up, i had to see a speech therapist to finally learn how to get rid of it. it still slips sometimes, but no, without learning how... it would have never gone away... keith makes fun of me sometimes when it does slip and i want to punch him in the face. there is no treatment for that. haha

kat said...

Paper Propaganda Haha...no treatment for wanting to punch your husband? That cracked me up. I can't help it I find the lisp cute when it happens to come out in grown ups.

NerdyRedneck Rob said...

That newscaster was pretty cute. I did not even notice a lisp. ;)

Brian o vretanos said...

I can understand why some parents don't bother with speech therapy - after all, it's not a particular barrier to comprehensibility, unlike, say, a stammer, where learning to cope can be a major improvement for the sufferer.

Anonymous said...

I'm just glad the Overstock.com Jingle Bells commercial isn't showing yet...

That commercial pisses me off.