The way the tongues muscle line up and work together are unique and found only found set up this way in humans. The teeth, lips, and tongue and voice box work in unison to form speech. Using over 20 different movements, the tongue can produce more than 90 words per minute. The tongue is essential for pronouncing the consonants “t,” “d,” “l” or the rolling “r.” When pronouncing the letter “k” the tongue is slightly narrowed at the back. And when we say “s,” the tip of the tongue moves backwards. If the tip of the tongue remains between the teeth, we hear a typical lisp. As we can see, it is a lot of squeezing, contracting and directional movements to allow us to speak. Having a piece of jewelry stapling some of the muscle groups together or limiting, and/or impairing movement can result in difficulty speaking, amongst other side effects that we will go into in a moment.