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Rhiannon Brooksbank–Jones of Beeston, UK, loves the Korean language and plans to study it in college. But she found that some sounds are hard for her to duplicate. So she’s taking a surgical solution:
Her parents agreed to her having a lingual frenectomy, a 15–minute operation under local anaesthetic that involved an incision in the flap of skin. Rhiannon admitted that it was “agony at first” but her tongue is now about 1cm longer and she can say words that were impossible before.
“I’d been learning Korean for about two years, and my speaking level was high, but I was really struggling with particular sounds,” she said.
“It became apparent after a little while that I was having trouble with the Korean letter ‘L’, which is very frequent and comes from a slightly higher place in the mouth than the English ‘L’, and that my tongue was too short.
“The surgical procedure was my only option. My pronunciation was very ‘foreign’, but now I can speak with a native Korean accent.”
Link | Photo: Paul Tonge
There’s been an abundance of cute on the web, particularly lately. At least one site aims to counter this movement, and that is Ugly Overload. I’ve been waiting for a great post to share, and this quick collection of tongues is just what the doctor ordered…although, I have to say, I still find the giraffe tongue to be quite cute.
