Metal Mouth Message Board

So I'm going to be learning French in the coming year, as I need a language to graduate college, and I was wondering how hard it will be with braces. Do they interfere a lot with pronunciation???

I speak both English (duh, obviously!!) and French fluently and it never caused any problems for me. I can't see how braces would hinder your learning. Good luck with the class, and feel free to drop me a line if you need help!

No worries about foreign languages. I am a linguist and speak more languages than I can keep track of. I am currently also adding Czech and Russian to my arsenal and thought the braces and bite plate would interfere but they don't at all. Sometimes having a bite plate is actually an advantage to make some of those Slavic sounds! The FUNNIEST thing is that when I went to my first Russian class after getting my bite plate, the teacher announced that we were going to be doing RUSSIAN tongue twisters! You can imagine how mortified I was to try those--BUT what better way to get good at speaking than practicing with Russian tongue twisters!!! It was like braces/bite plate boot camp!!!!!!

*aka

The first part about learning a new language is mostly listening and reading the words., comprehension. Speaking, or speaking it fluently does not come for a long time. We tend to concentrate so much on the correct words, we pay little attention to fluency and accent, so you are fine.

PS- I just started learning spanish and I'm going to spend a month in Mexico this January. I can still sopeak English fine, so I don't think braces put me at any disadvatange!

Not at all hard. I did 4 different languages (French, German, Spanish and Russian) as an undergrad-all with braces on.

Though, I will say, when I did German I had a bite plate and that made it a bit hard.