Betty Botter is a

tongue-twister A tongue twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly, and can be used as a type of spoken (or sung) word game. Additionally, they can be used as exercises to improve pronunciation and fluency. Some tongue twisters p ...

written by

Carolyn Wells Carolyn Wells (June 18, 1862 — March 26, 1942) was an American mystery author. Life and career Born in Rahway, New Jersey, she was the daughter of William E. and Anna Wells. After finishing school she worked as a librarian for the Rahway Li ...

. It was originally titled "The Butter Betty Bought." By the middle of the 20th century, it had become part of the

Mother Goose The figure of Mother Goose is the imaginary author of a collection of French fairy tales and later of English nursery rhymes. As a character, she appeared in a song, the first stanza of which often functions now as a nursery rhyme. This, howeve ...

collection of nursery rhymes.

Construction

The construction is based on

alliteration Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...

, using the repeated two-

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

pattern /'b__tə 'b__tə 'b__tə/ with a range of

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

s in the first, stressed syllable. The difficulty is in clearly and consistently differentiating all the vowels from each other. :They are almost all

short vowels In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...

: :/æ/ batter :/e/ better - Betty :/ɪ/ bitter - bit o' :/ɒ/ Botter :/ʌ/ butter :with one long vowel /ɔ:/ 'Bought a'

Lyrics

When it was first published in "The Jingle Book" in 1899 it read:

Betty Botta bought some butter; “But,” said she, “this butter’s bitter! If I put it in my batter It will make my batter bitter. But a bit o’ better butter Will but make my batter better.” Then she bought a bit o’ butter Better than the bitter butter, Made her bitter batter better. So ’twas better Betty Botta Bought a bit o’ better butter.

Variations

Bronte Alberts' version

Betty Botter bought a bit of butter But the bit of butter Betty Botter bought was bitter So Betty Botter bought a better bit of butter

Oscheff Fia's short version

Betty Botter bought a bit of butter but the bit of butter was bitter so Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter to make the bit of bitter butter better.

A long version

Betty Botter bought some butter but, she said, this butters bitter; if I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter. But, a bit of better butter will make my batter better. So, Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter and made her batter a bit better.

Betty Batta

Betty Batta bought some butter, but she said "this butter's bitter if I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter". So she bought some better butter, better than the bitter butter put it in her batter and the batter tasted better.

James Josie's Version

Betty Botter bought some butter, But Betty Botter found her butter bitter. So Betty Botter bought some better butter. A little bit of bitter butter didn't bother Betty. But her better butter better not be bitter!YouTube video

There was an animated version featured on PBS Kids Television Channel, animated by Lynn Tomlinson. In this variation the rhyme is as follows:

Betty Botter bought some butter, but the butter, it was bitter. If she put it in her batter, it would make her batter bitter, but a bit of better butter, that would make her batter better. So, she bought a bit of butter, better than her bitter butter, And she put it in her batter, and her batter was not bitter. So, T'was better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.

Betty Botter bought some butter... Betty Botter bought some butter but she said the butter was bitter if I put it in my batter, it would make my batter bitter but a bit of better butter would make my batter better So, Betty Botter bought some butter better than her bitter butter and if I put it in my batter it would make my batter better.

Another version (from the UK)

Betty bought a bit of butter, but the bit of butter Betty bought was bitter. So Betty bought a better bit of butter, to make the bitter bit of butter better.

References

{{reflist Tongue-twisters