How missing teeth change the way you speak

Sound is shaped between the teeth

Speech starts as air from the lungs and becomes a sound only once the mouth narrows that stream. Lips, tongue, palate and teeth build the narrowing together. The front teeth are the fixed part of the arrangement: air passes over their edges, the tip of the tongue rests behind them, and the lower lip meets the upper ones. When a tooth goes, the narrowing goes with it, and air leaves through an opening that was never meant to be there.

That is why many people hear a missing tooth in their own speech before they see it in the mirror. Position matters as well: a gap at the back changes pronunciation very little, while a single missing tooth at the front is audible straight away.

Which sounds are affected most

The sounds that suffer first are the ones that need a narrow channel. For s and z the tip of the tongue forms a thin groove just behind the upper front teeth and the air runs over their edges; widen the groove and the sound turns whistling or slushy. For f and v the lower lip rests against the edge of the upper front teeth, and without that edge the sound never fully forms. The two th sounds depend on the same edge.

• S and z: a high whistle, or a broad, lisping sound
• F and v: weak and breathy, because the lower lip has nothing to rest against
• Th: hard to place when the tongue has no tooth edge to touch
• Saliva spraying as you talk, because air leaves through a wide opening

The tongue loses its landmark

While you speak, the tongue finds its position from fixed points inside the mouth, and the back of the upper front teeth is the most important of them. After an extraction the tongue keeps reaching for the old place out of habit, does not find it, and spreads into the space instead. Within a few weeks that detour becomes a habit and speech is built around the gap. This is precisely why pronunciation changes again once the gap is filled.

Many people cope by covering the mouth or simply saying less, which does not change the sound at all, only how often anyone hears it.

The first weeks with a denture or an implant

It feels natural to expect speech to improve the moment the gap is filled, but for most people the opposite happens first. A new surface has entered the mouth: a denture base across the palate, a tooth of unfamiliar thickness, an edge the tongue has never touched. Because the tongue does not know these surfaces, the first days sound foreign and the s in particular comes out whistling. Within a few weeks the tongue usually learns the new shape and the sounds come out cleanly again; how long that takes differs from person to person and with the type of replacement.

Reading aloud speeds up the adjustment

The tongue learns a new arrangement by repetition. Fifteen minutes of reading aloud a day makes talking easier both with a gap and with new teeth. Practising the difficult sounds one at a time helps as well: single words with s and z in them first, then sentences built from those words, and finally ordinary conversation.

• Read a short passage aloud at the same time each day, in your normal voice
• Count slowly from sixty to seventy, where the s sounds follow one another
• Record yourself on your phone, because hearing your own voice shows which sound is catching
• Stop as soon as you tire, because forcing the words tightens the tongue

When the change is no longer temporary

The difficulty should ease as the weeks pass. If the s is still whistling after several weeks, or the teeth click against each other while you talk, the issue is no longer adjustment. The thickness of the denture behind the front teeth, or the length of the teeth themselves, is corrected instead, and a small alteration is often enough. If speech changed suddenly and has nothing to do with a missing tooth, and the tongue feels numb or one side of the face is weak, seek dental or medical care the same day.

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