Here at Lingo24, our slogan is ‘Love Your Language’, and this shines through, whether it’s in our translations or here on this very blog. But we discovered someone who’s taken her love of the Korean language to the next level, by having oral surgery to help her speak it better!

Nineteen-year-old student, Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones, was so disappointed at not being able to pronounce vital letters of the Korean alphabet owing to her short tongue, that she went under the knife to lengthen it.

Rhiannon’s dentist had suggested she was struggling to make some of the complicated Korean sounds owing to a thick lingual frenum—a flap of skin that connects the underside of the tongue to the rest of the mouth. The A-level student underwent a lingual frenectomy, which involves making a cut to this flap of skin, therefore ‘lengthening’ the tongue.

After two years of learning Korean, Rhiannon is now happy to report that, having gained another 1cm on her tongue, she can now pronounce the words she once struggled with.

She now plans to study Korean Studies and Business Management at Sheffield University, which involves a year abroad in Korea’s capital, Seoul.

‘Some might say it’s extreme, but you could apply the same argument to plastic surgery,’ she said.

‘That makes people feel more confident looks-wise, and this made me feel more confident language-wise. For me, it was like having a tooth pulled.’

It certainly gives a whole new meaning to mother tongue!

tags: Korean, language, languages, Love your language