advice for writing a stutterer from an actual stutterer;
okay no shade at all I just want all of u to learn and grow and become better writers! so here’s a handy tip list!
we don’t stutter on every word. okay, sometimes it can seem it, but honestly, we don’t, so leave a few words in there to give your readers some breathing room.
we stutter more on specific sounds. for me, f and s sounds are big ones. everyone has their thing and most stutterers have sounds that are harder to get out.
we don’t just stutter at the beginning of words and sentences. okay, honestly this is a big one for me. sometimes, a word starts off really well and goes down the drain at the second syllable! and the stutter doesn’t disappear once we’ve made it past the first word – it clings in there, so don’t forget it.
some of us don’t always stutter. some, not all, of us have what’s known as an anxious stutter, which generally comes alongside anxiety disorders. so, while it may be usually present, when a person with an anxious stutter is particularly comfortable with a situation, it tends to get better (or even almost disappear).
we don’t stutter when we swear. this is why some of us can stutter and stutter and stutter on a word and then shout fuck and everything’s cool. as far as science knows, this is because swearing is from a more primitive part of the brain, and so it bypasses the bit that makes us stutter! it’s so cool honestly.
we don’t stutter when we sing. the biggest two reasons for this one is 1) music comes from a different part of the brain to talking (language=left; music=right), and so it once again bypasses the stutter, or 2) ‘easy voice’, which is the voice that people sing in, is softer and smoother, and the sounds are longer so there’s less opportunity to stutter. either option is way cool but we don’t stutter when we sing.
sometimes, we give up on words. after a certain amount of stuttering on a certain word, you may see a stutterer take a deep breath and either try again, or replace it with a synonym. sometimes that word just won’t fit right in our mouths!
we hate it when people try to guess what we’re trying to say or try to speed us up. this might be a more personal thing for me, but there’s nothing I hate more than that clicky sound people make or the weird hand gestures or being told to “spit it out.” because we can’t control this shit and it gets tiring. it’s better just to let the person get it out and take their time with it, so when you’re writing, keep this in mind!
it gets worse when we’re anxious or stressed, and when we’re excited! I get really really stuttery when I’m enthusiastic about the topic of conversation, because I know so much about that thing that I try to talk really fast and my mouth can’t keep up! it’s the same when I’m anxious or stressed – when there’s more on our minds, the more everything gets a little muddled.
I hope this was helpful! feel free to add on and spread around!
I am not a person who stutters, but I am a speech pathologist, so I figured I’d add a bit to this. There are also several different types of stuttering (or the fancy term disfluency).
There are three main types:
The one most people think of is repetition. This can be a single sound repeated like, “S-s-save me a s-s-seat.” Or it can be part of a word repeated like the OP mentioned above where they get stuck on the second syllable. Or it can be whole word repetitions, “Can-can-can-can I go?”
The second type is called blocking or blocks. This is when the air or sound is stopped at lungs, throat, or mouth. It’s kind of impossible to write, but it would look like, “Can…” he seemed to be grabbing for sound, “I come too.” When someone is blocking, there is no sound and typically you can see the strain in the person.
The third type is called prolongation and this when someone gets stuck on a sound. They’re holding on to a sound but their lips, tongue and teeth aren’t moving. It can happen on any sound but it’s more common on vowels. This would like, “Caaaaaaaaaan I come too?”
Disfluencies can last anywhere from less than a second to up to 10 seconds. Typically, it’s from less than a second to up to 2 seconds, which doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but it’s longer than you think.
Along with stuttering, there tend to be secondary behaviors which can come in a variety of types. The most common behavior is escape behavior that people who stutter have developed to try to “get out of” the stutter. Not everyone has secondary behaviors, but they can be things like turning their head to the side, rapid eye blinking, tucking their head, tapping fingers against their leg. This might also be when the rate of speech changes. After an instance of disfluency, a person who stutters might speak the rest of the sentence really fast in an attempt to “just spit it out.”
You might also get what are called “avoidance behaviors”. Avoidance behaviors are not necessarily bad but they might effect the rhythm and rate of speech. This could be talking around a word that’s hard to say or using starter phrases like, “Ya know,” a lot or what we call “anti-expectancy devices”. This would be something like talking in a sing song voice or a different accent or a silly voice because people tend not to stutter when they’re using those different parts of their brain. They might use a lot of filler words like “umm…” before difficult words.
Every person who stutters is different.
If you’re writing someone who stutters or if you’re friends with someone who stutters, the safest thing to do when they start to stutter is to let them say what they were trying to say in whatever time it takes them. Don’t get impatient or finish their sentences. If you’re really close to the person, you can ask them what they want you to do, but most people I’ve talked to (children and adults alike) just want to be able to have their say without constantly being interrupted.
Oh hey it’s back on my dash perfect! I was just thinking of this the other day!
OHOHOHO wow the Korean alphabet is awesome. The people who designed it were geniuses and were obviously incredibly schooled in the morphology and phonology of their language. HNNGGG
wow
여러분 모두 한국어 쓰세요 한국어 좋음
한국어, 한글은 보면 맨날쓰는거지만 볼수록,쓸수록 예뻐요..참으로 곱구나’3’♥
ㅇ어머 (감동
짱 이쁜 한국어 쓰세요 여러분
굳
신기하게 가르치는군요 보고 신기했다
FUN FACT!
IT WASN’T JUST ANY OLD DUDE WHO DECIDED, “HEY I WANT TO CREATE A KOREAN ALPHABET.”
IT WAS KING SEJONG, WHO ORDERED HIS ROYAL SCHOLARS TO CREATE THIS ALPHABET SO READING AND WRITING COULD BE ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE, EVEN THE PEASANTS. IT WAS PURPOSELY DESIGNED TO BE EASY TO LEARN.
SO SHOUT OUT TO KING SEJONG, WHO REALIZED BEFORE MANY OTHERS THE IMPORTANCE OF UNIVERSAL LITERACY.
NOW people with anxiety disorders can check their email replies and applications and stuff to make sure we’re coming across the way we want to
Do you have any idea how important this is right now? Making sure you sound right without having to ask a friend to proof read you? This just made my life a whole lot easier.
OMG analyzing someone else’s text to see if you’re reacting appropriately?!? To make sure you’re interpreting them the way they intended!
This is SO COOL
A couple friends of mine at my school are making a phone app like this for spoken English! It’s called ToneAware and it’s designed for autism spectrum people to be able to discreetly interpret the tone and/or mood of someone they’re having a conversation with and I’ve seen them demonstrate it, it works really well and is super cool !!!
Thedan Script – used extensively by Gardnerian Witches Runic Alphabets – they served for divinatory and ritual purposes, as well as the more practical use; there are three main types of Runes; Germanic, Scandinavian/Norse, and Anglo-Saxon and they each have any number of variations, depending on the region from which they originate Celtic and Pictish – early Celts and their priests, the Druids, had their own form of alphabet known as “Ogam Bethluisnion”, which was an extremely simple alphabet used more for carving into wood and stone, than for general writing, while Pictish artwork was later adopted by the Celts, especially throughout Ireland Ceremonial Magick Alphabets – “Passing the River”, “Malachim” and “Celestial” alphabets were used almost exclusively by ceremonial magicians
Theban (not Thedan), aka the Honorian Alphabet or Runes of Honorius, was first published by 15th century German cryptographer/historian/lexicographer/occultist/theologian Johannes Trithemius.
“Passing the River/Passage du Fleuve/Transitus Fluvii,” “Malachim,” and “Celestial/Angelic Script” alphabets were all first described by 16th century German alchemist/astrologer/lawyer/magician/occultist/soldier/theologist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, one of Trithemius’s students. “Passing the River” and “Transitus Fluvii” are both derived from Ancient Hebrew alphabet, while “Malachim” is derived from Ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic.
Why I never mock or even bring attention to mispronunciation in a conversation, and will snap down anyone who tries to
Besides poverty, for many peoplevEnglish is a second (or third+) language and has weird rules too.
Most of the time, even when words are mispronounced, they’re still understandable if you make an effort. Just be patient and don’t look down on people who mispronounce!
Also social anxiety and/or autism (among other things) will do that to you – anything where you grew up reading much more than you spoke (and getting shut down for mispronunciation when you do speak up does a whole lot to *keep* you quiet, turns out)
This is part of why the concept of “proper English” and “speaking properly” in general is classist, along with ableist and racist.
This is part of why when tone policing people or applying respectability politics about the way they speak, is as well, and is also why implying someone is less educated and/or less important because of how they speak, is too.
Older forms of English kept Latin’s gender-specific suffixes -tor and -trix; tor is for men and trix is for women. So a male pilot is an aviator, a female pilot is an aviatrix. A male fighter is a gladiator, a female fighter is a gladiatrix.
This contrasts with the modern system, where tor is for both men and women, and trix are for kids.
Oh! I actually know the answer to this one! American newspaper ads charged by the letter, so a lot of people would eliminate unnecessary letters like the second L in “cancelled” or the U in “colour”. Some of these spelling changes were used so often that they stuck, and now Americans just spell some words differently.
In summary: Americans spell things weird because capitalism
One of my favorite things about history is how little bits of it are preserved through traditions and mythology and we don’t even notice it. Like how we still say “’Tis the season” at Christmastime. Who says ‘tis anymore? No one, it’s dead except in this tiny phrase. I had a friend once tell me that she noticed the only group of people who could consistently identify a spinning wheel were girls between the ages of 4 and 7. Why? Sleeping Beauty. There are little linguistic quirks that have been around for centuries, bits of slang we use that people 400 years ago would recognize, but unless you showed someone a 400 year old dictionary, they’d never believe it. Whispers of the past are always there.
precisely! There’s far more of them than you’d realize. A pothole is from when potters used to harvest clay from the side of the road. Pot. Hole.
Your phone goes boinkey bleep but we still call it ringing, from when phones had actual bells on the outside of actual boxes.
Have you ever had to explain to a Gen Z why we “roll down” a car’s window?
Lowercase and uppercase are from typesetting, storing lead letters into boxes or cases for print.
The daily grind is from when a day’s use of grain was ground for bread.
“Fire!” as the command to shoot, in English, only picked up with gunpowder, as you’d light or fire the guns. To fire is to set fire to something. Prior to that, the command for a bunch of archers isn’t and has never been Fire, it’s Loose. Notice this little anachronism in most medievaloid films.
I don’t understand why people hate puns, they’re language taken and twisted and wielded to create a special brand of humour; they’re the result of thousands of years of language evolution and combined with the finest wit, and resulting in an universal reaction of laughter and groaning ; in a way it’s a form of magic, if you consider magic as the power of words on the world.
Queer Fiction Writer 