While taking language lessons, she struggled to pronounce certain sounds in Korean. It was blamed on Rhiannon, of Beeston, Notts, having a slightly shorter than average tongue, caused by an unusually thick lingual frenulum – the flap of skin that joins the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth. 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. "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."
Read the full article at The Telegraph.
