How would language be affected if humans had animal-like mouths?

Every single depiction out there seems to think that animal teeth and/or mouth are no problem for a perfect speech-therapist approved pronunciation.

For instance the Cat People. They never have any specific accent other than Spanish. So for our possibly speech-impaired cat people, let's assume that the vocal chords remain the same as ours. Dentition-wise, we'll go with chimpanzee teeth but tighter (an arbitrary "middle ground" between human and feline teeth), like so:

With such dentition and regular human lips, what sounds would be hard to pronounce? I heard that long canines give a lisp, but would people born with long teeth overcome it?

What about cat or wolf chops on an otherwise human face? (still with human vocal chords, and teeth as pictured above) More or less like this:

What about Lizard People? Can this jaw really produce every sound we can?

And Bird People? Parrots are really good at imitating us, but it MUST somehow be harder to speak with a beak!

Unlike depicted in most media, there is no way they would be able to pronounce the same sounds as humans, is there? What would they be unable to pronounce? What could they pronounce that we can't?

posted over 7 years ago

Udon Nomaneim‭

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