Lisp

This morning the lovely Croatian designer at Magnet, Diana (Dajana), helped me to plan out my new (very tiny) kitchen. The whole process is an unusual one as the price of everything appears to be a mysterious moveable feast. Discounts can be applied willy nilly based on what seems like nothing more than the quality of the relationship between designer and customer or maybe it's just decided on what day of the week it is... Based on the 65% discount (!) that Diana was generous (?) enough to give me I was left wondering why anyone would ever buy a full price kitchen. Bizarre.
The whole experience took twice as long as expected so I hurried back to pick up some butterscotch and pecan yum yums to take over to Sarah, plumber, in the flat and sort out a few things before the weekend arrived in earnest. Must say, the yum yums did a great perking up job on the both of us.
I then spent the rest of the afternoon ordering a bathroom mirror, searching for a slim depth washing machine, despairing over the online council tax form, making a list of tasks that will need to be done next in the flat, before I actually move in.
Before you could shout 'god, save me from this list', it was time to pedal an escape to a Las Tres Mosqueteras meet-up - Maria, sis & I meet up one Friday every month to chat Spanish in one of those four Grantchester pubs (where pic was taken). It was the first time I'd seen Maria since the summer break so there was much catching up to be done over a sweet potato and coconut curry (new on the menu and delish). One much debated topic was the lisp. Maria, a Spaniard who has lived here for over ten years now, wanted to translate 'lisp' as 'ceceo', once we'd explained what it actually was. I've always found it ironic that, in terms of pronunciation, the word 'lisp' only highlights a person's lisp. In Spain lisping the letter 's' can be completely normal dialect thing and people can either do 'ceceo' or 'seseo' - pronouncing an 's' as a 'th' or a 'c' as an 's' - depending on the region they live in. Are you still with me?! Anyway, I was wondering how many people in Spain actually have a lisp (without wanting to). Turns out in Spanish a lisp is called 'un sigmatismo', but it can't be that common if Maria had never heard of it. (If you're interested, and, let's face it, who wouldn't be, an urban legend attributes the presence of the dental fricative to a Spanish king with a lisp, but the various realizations of these coronal fricatives are actually a result of historical processes that date back to the 15th century.)
I have taught a couple of pupils over the years who didn't appear to realise that they even had lisps (and that they were causing difficulties with pronunciation of the 's' in Spanish). I am always at pains to point out that there's nothing wrong with having a lisp, but that it does affect foreign language learning in terms of authentic pronunciation, and not knowing that you have one... well, I find that worrying in terms of self-awareness.
It's actually the opposite situation for many English learners of Spanish. The lazy English tongue isn't asked much anymore to pronounce an interdental 'th', preferring to go with 'f' or 'v' instead, e.g. "I fought ..." (My response to this is always, 'With whom were you fighting?' I know, I'm annoying.) or "I went wiv my bruvva." or "My favourite number is free." 
Pal and ex-colleague DofB and I used to enjoy an energetic dilution Vs evolution debate. I argued the former and he the latter. 
I blame Eastenders ("You're not my muvva!!!)