There's a simple solution to this: Either enunciate, or shut up until you learn!

Contributed By:Dorothy Nevils

I’ve had my lips all my life. I’m pretty sure they came with the rest of me. In fact, if I had a $20 bill in my pocket, I wouldn’t be afraid to bet it. I didn’t see me when I was born, and nobody took a picture back then. The earliest picture my mother had of me was a few months, and somebody stole it out of the album. Nevertheless, I’ve seen enough babies and pictures of babies to know that mouths came with them. Plus, when parents made good on the threat to “knock the taste out of your mouth,” they left the mouth, a little bigger, but there.

The point: Your mouth has always been there, whether open or shut, and will likely remain. So why does it cause so much trouble?

You’ve no doubt noticed that people’s lips differ. Blacks’ lips are generally fuller. That, however, cannot be used as an excuse for sloppy speech, for, as far as I know, the muscles work the same in everybody’s mouth! Lazy is a choice, and far too many people make that choice!

An ex-student met me several weeks ago and, in an attempt to jog my memory after several generations, said, “You used to say I had “lazy” speech.” Perchance that helped her, but not me. Lazy speech was – and still is – an epidemic! The difference was that my words had stuck with her. Her speech didn’t sound lazy that day!

For far too many people, talking is just taking the lips apart and moving them up and down with no sense of purpose, rhythm, nor any other, shall we say, standard…an “ecclesiastical procedure”: A time for parting the lips… and a time for putting them together again, even if it’s just plopping one on top of the other, a procedure so mindless that even a baby can do it.

There is a deeper purpose: Communication. Communication rules out the “just one – you! ” There are others, and those others are most important when you talk!

Let’s say you don’t like “chitlins,” you don’t like hominy, and you don’t like okra. How’d you like someone to come to your house bearing these three? Or, suppose someone brought his stinky body onto the bus, then opened his mouth and let out a “whole ‘nother” foul smell. I won’t print what you’d say. It’s too ugly.

Think about it: Just as someone brought to you what you hate, you are forcing on others something as distasteful, and they are trapped! They can’t turn you off or shut your darned mouth, and you don’t know you need to!

There’s a simple solution to this: Either enunciate, or shut up until you learn! Listening to folks flop sounds around in their mouths is a most horrid experience!

Let me add one more condition: Stay away from children! Their teachers, if serious, work really hard to get them together, teaching them – if they themselves have learned – how to enunciate, to project, to inflect… how to do all the things that make for good speech. Do not undo everything that others who care have done!

Remember that the tongue’s work is generally limited to the most flexible parts. Don’t flop it up to the roof, or squash or slosh it around like S in a washer; the lower jaw and the lips are for controlling the space needed to form your words, not slosh them like overcooked mush.

Words carry your message to others. Are they welcomed, or do folks close the drapes and whisper, “Shhh. Pretend we’re not home!”?

Story Posted:03/31/2017