Speech Difficulties

Our speech is controlled by the brain.  The brain sends messages to the muscles of the face, lips, tongue, palate and voice box when you speak.

Speech difficulties may be the result of damage to the muscles and nerves used in speaking, which may make speech sound slow, slurred, quiet, jerky, too fast, lacking in expression or unclear, making it difficult to understand. This is called ‘dysarthria’ (pronounced dis-ar-three-a).

Another disorder of speech is a difficulty coordinating the speech sounds. The person has no weakness of the muscles used in speech, but the brain has difficulty sending messages on how the sounds should be combined to make a word. This disorder is called apraxia of speech (pronounced a-praks-ee-a).