How I spent two years learning to pronounce the hard sound “L”

Part 1. Inferiority

It so happened that in childhood my parents did not take care of their child’s speech and I did not learn to pronounce the two letters “r” and “l”. I had both burr (which I remember, but fragmentarily) and lambdacism.

Lambdacism is the scientific name for the incorrect pronunciation of the soft or hard sound “L”.

Imprinted in my memory are memories of how, at the age of probably 7 years, I spontaneously learned to pronounce the letter “r” and my burr disappeared. I just understood how to pronounce it, my tongue fell into place on its own. Probably the reason for this was the constant and unconscious attempts to sing songs. But I only remembered a fragment when I began to pronounce it, which made me happy like a child, but of course I didn’t put any special emphasis on it. The same cannot be said about the second speech ailment, which haunted me for the remaining years, until I was 30 years old.

There are varieties of lambdacism, and mine was reflected in swallowing the hard letter “l.” I’ve never had problems with the soft “l” sound, but I’ve had trouble with the hard sound, given the fact that my last name begins with a hard “l” sound. I don’t think I have to talk about how many times I had to clarify the correct spelling of my last name, because each time I pronounced it differently from the way it is pronounced and spelled.

Anyone who has the same defect and is forced to communicate a lot and often understands the essence of the problem I am writing about. Lambdacism, of course, does not compare with the inferiority of a person without a limb, but it contributes to the uncertainty when you deliberately look for synonyms of words just so as not to say that damn word with a hard “l”. But you can’t come up with a synonym for the last name.

Of course, over the years I got used to it and practically didn’t notice the defect in my speech and didn’t look for any alternatives in words when expressing thoughts, that is, I felt completely confident and didn’t think about learning how to pronounce that damned hard sound “l”, although in some words it sounded terrible and it was not immediately clear what word I said.

That was until I started reading books. I will not go into details and the reasons for starting this activity, but I want to emphasize that this defect did not just start to look like a tie from under a jacket, but began to scream into a professional microphone and exactly the same headphones. I recorded and listened to my speech every day for a couple of hours, so I had nowhere to hide. The microphone, like a lens, magnified my illness, made it clear and bright like a laser beam that burned through my self-confidence. I was surrounded by my enemy, who was apparently waiting for this day to show himself in all his glory and remind me how long ago I hid a piece of my confidence from myself.

Part 2. Challenge yourself

I didn't think long. At that time, I already knew that a physical illness, although difficult to correct, because it is like a stone that has been sharpened for many years by an aggressive external environment, is still just a part of the structure of a person and, like any “physical” object, can be changed. I was ready for the changes. I declared war on my enemy.

The search for information led me to YouTube, where I listened to the results of those who had already been able to defeat their enemy. Some people did it in six months, some of them did it in a couple of weeks or months, I honestly don’t remember! Well, if they succeeded, then I will certainly succeed! Why am I worse? There I listened to how adult aunts taught small children to hold their tongues between their teeth and repeat over and over again the words that I did not like to say the most. I realized that it was not a 30-year-old adult man sitting in front of the monitor, but 7-year-old Artyom, whom his mother was teaching to pronounce words.

Having faced the truth, or rather, having listened to the next recording of a chapter of the book, I began to do the exercises that the speech therapists talked about. Nothing worked. From their words, everything looked simple. Repeat after me and speak. Well done, now like this and like this. Of course, from time to time there were glimpses of the sun in the sky of war and I was already glad that I had uttered this damned sound, but when I recorded myself on the microphone, I realized that my sound had become even worse. Somehow feignedly, with even greater emphasis on the defect that I, on the contrary, tried to correct, the word chapter from my usual “gava” it turned into “gvava”. And only occasionally, maybe once out of 20-30, there was something close to a solid pronunciation. Yes, thanks to speech therapists from YouTube, I understood the principle of pronunciation of the hard sound “l” and roughly understood where and how the tongue should be positioned in the mouth when producing a sound, but I couldn’t do it correctly, habit didn’t allow it, the tongue was simply not used to such maneuvers.

One day, dejected, since the desired progress was not observed, I returned to the search for materials and exercises for training and found material that was unique in my opinion. A small 12-page brochure entitled “Speech material for automating the sound L (words, phrases, sentences, phrases, poems, texts)” authored by I.A. Matykina. This was a real treasure, because it contains dozens, if not hundreds of words with a hard letter “l” of varying degrees of difficulty in pronunciation, phrases and sentences made from them. Now I didn’t have to come up with words or wait for a word to practice in the book. I could just focus on simple actions and pronunciation!

Part 3. And again training

I got fired up again and resumed training harder. It was impossible to say that I was consistent in this matter. First, I started recording my workouts with a microphone for further analysis and adjustments. I don’t remember how many training sessions were eventually recorded, but only one of the first recordings survived. Since setting up a microphone and project for recording took some time, I gave up this idea of recording workouts and just read this brochure for 5-10 minutes a day.

After some time, my speech apparatus began to give in and I began to succeed more and more often. The simplest words to pronounce, when the hard letter “l” comes first in the word, began to sound “human” to me. It's not perfect, but I saw the light at the end of this speech tunnel. There were problems with words containing two hard letters “l”, with an “l” at the end of the word, and in some other cases. The most popular words that were heard in my apartment were the words “boat” and “chapter”. It was convenient for me to evaluate pronunciation using them.

And since I read books every day, and I read them according to the old pattern, with swallowing letters, since it was difficult for me to simply read them, not to mention introducing the pronunciation of a new sound. But still, little by little, I began to introduce the pronunciation of the most “simple words” when recording audiobooks. This was already more difficult than training separately with a brochure. The habit was deeply ingrained and I rewrote each such word a dozen times to achieve an acceptable sound. I realized that when recording the next chapter of the book, I covered a small percentage of words with a new pronunciation (albeit still far from pure pronunciation) and this could not but rejoice, although most of the words containing the hard sound “l” remained with a swallowed sound when recording. Behind the joy was hidden a mini-victory over my enemy, but still he was still too strong, there was no talk of a complete victory.

And his strength manifested itself in situations of ordinary life, everywhere except for reading a book and training with a brochure, that is, 90% of the rest of the time. In all situations, when communicating on an automatic level, I continued to speak as I spoke before, greedily swallowing the hard “l” sound. Fortunately, at that time I had already studied applied science, one of the principles of which says: “Training in the process of life and activity,” that is, you need to train in the process of life, without interrupting tasks and without allocating time for training, otherwise there will be no point . I finally saw the next stage of training.

Part 4. Training in the process of life and activity

I began to constantly catch myself mispronouncing in life, and instead of reading words (that contained a hard “l”) sound to myself, I began to pronounce them out loud. When I went shopping I was like a child who walked out loud and read “noodles”, “bowl”, “milk”. It was funny, but effective. My confidence grew and I did better and better.

The last step was to introduce a firm “l” when communicating with people. It turned out clumsily and sometimes I stammered and looked like a stutterer, I had to pronounce it several times, but my anxiety decreased and my confidence grew. My whole life and the situations around me turned into a gym, into constant and interesting training and work on myself. Progress was very slow, never in my life has there been such slow progress, but it was there and after a while it was noticeable more and more.

A little more than two years have passed since the start of training. I haven’t written down books for a long time, but all this time I continue to correct myself in pronunciation in the process of life and activity. Now, in 90% of words and expressions, I don’t think or slow down before uttering the cherished words. And what’s most interesting is that I haven’t written down a single book with a written pronunciation of the hard sound “l” (although I may still write it down) and, it seems to me, the pronunciation became a habit about six months ago.

Part 5. Conclusions

Now I give lectures on my course in the IT field, I call my students every day, and only when my speech apparatus gets tired, I can stumble on the most difficult words or when I emphasize some words, but I will definitely correct myself. Now it is more difficult for me to pronounce a hard “l” incorrectly than correctly, the pronunciation has become a habit, although, as it seems to me, it is still not ideal and does not sound like an announcer. But I don’t need it, the current level is enough for me. I think that most of you will not notice any obvious defects in my speech.

When I started training, I didn’t believe that I would succeed; the pronunciation seemed too neglected. I repeat, this was not critical for life, but for a novice announcer at that moment it was terrible. I even remember my thoughts when, after hundreds of attempts to read the words, progress did not get off the ground. But thanks to a small brochure, diligence and the simple principle of applied science, I overcame this unpleasant illness.

Since that day I have not stopped, I continue to train and implement changes in my skills. With due diligence, it is never too late to start changing yourself, so if you have been thinking about changes in life or a change of profession, then I will leave here a link to my Telegram channel, where I sometimes publish the results of my students in the field of testing and other useful materials and posts about Spain .

Slowly but surely I continue to work on myself, but on other planes. I wish the same for you. Thank you for reading to the end, I hope this post will help you in solving your protracted problem or correcting your illness.