Teen gets tongue lengthened to speak Korean

I came across this interesting news article today. It's so odd, I had to share it with you guys.

Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones, 19 year old British Student, underwent surgery - a lingual frenectomy, to lengthen her tongue by 1cm to speak Korean better. She is devoted to the Korean culture, she has been studying the language for 2 years and has dreams of living in the country.

When speaking in Korean, Rhiannon had trouble pronouncing crucial sounds in the Korean language. To find out the reason why she couldn’t say those sounds, she visited her dentist. Her dentist told her the reason could be that she had a shorter than average tongue, a condition known as Ankyloglossia or "tongue tie".

After the 20 minute operation at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, she can now speak with a native Korean accent.

"My pronunciation was very 'foreign', but now I can speak with a native Korean accent," Ms Brooksbank-Jones said.

"The surgical procedure was my only option. It's not like you can stretch your tongue otherwise. "

I'm no expert in this area, but maybe having a voice coach or a speech therapist could have helped her pronounce the words better? I just think getting your tongue surgically lengthened is quite extreme.

Source: ninemsn

The power of twitterverse – Japan Doctors used Twitter to save people

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Tweets that save lives by CherriiPOP

Are you a twitterer? Or what I like to call it a twitterbug? Maybe you should start tweeting because one tweet can make a huge difference in the world.

Doctors in Japan used twitter to reach chronically ill patients in the wake of the natural disasters, to tell them where they can receive life saving treatment when phones were down.

Doctors directly tweeted to 60 patients, and their tweets were further retweeted over 100 times. Isn’t twitterverse marvelous!

More and more healthcare workers around the world are using social media to connect with patients – sending out medication and appointment reminders.

This is not the first time twitter has saved lives. A fan tweeted to Demi Moore about ending their life. Demi contacted authorities and luckily they were able to track the person from the tweet and save their life.

Tweets can vary from mundane things like – what someone ate for breakfast. To lifesaving tweets such as the ones the doctors sent out.

I am a twitterbug! I follow a lot of celebrities - even if they tweet about the most dull thing, I find it interesting. Isn’t that ironic? Being a fan, it feels like I’m getting behind the scenes snippets of their life so it does feel kind of cool.

Did you know Japanese is the second most tweeted language in twitterverse? Second to English.

Reference: Reuters, Japan Times