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
Word games are spoken, board, card or video games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.
Word games are generally used as a source of entertainment, but can additionally serve an educational purpose. Young ...
. Additionally, they can be used as exercises to improve pronunciation and fluency. Some tongue twisters produce results that are humorous (or humorously vulgar) when they are mispronounced, while others simply rely on the confusion and mistakes of the speaker for their amusement value.
Types of tongue twisters
Some tongue twisters rely on rapid alternation between similar but distinct
phoneme
A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
s (e.g., ''s'' and ''sh'' ), combining two different alternation patterns,
familiar constructs in
loanword
A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...
s, or other features of a spoken language in order to be difficult to articulate.
For example, the following sentence was said to be "the most difficult of common English-language tongue twisters" by
William Poundstone.
These deliberately difficult expressions were popular in the 19th century. The popular "she sells seashells" tongue twister was originally published in 1850 as a diction exercise. The term "tongue twister" was first applied to this kind of expression in 1895.
"She sells seashells" was turned into a popular song in 1908, with words by British songwriter Terry Sullivan and music by
Harry Gifford. According to folklore, it was said to be inspired by the life and work of
Mary Anning
Mary Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was an English fossil collector, fossil trade, dealer, and palaeontologist. She became known internationally for her discoveries in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Cha ...
, an early fossil collector. However, there is no evidence that Anning inspired either the tongue twister or the song.
Another well-known tongue twister is "
Peter Piper
"Peter Piper" is an English-language nursery rhyme and well-known alliteration tongue-twister. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19745.
Lyrics
The traditional version, as published in John Harris' ''Peter Piper's Practical Principles of ...
":
Many tongue twisters use a combination of
alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of syllable-initial consonant sounds between nearby words, or of syllable-initial vowels if the syllables in question do not start with a consonant. It is often used as a literary device. A common example is " Pe ...
and
rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually the exact same phonemes) in the final Stress (linguistics), stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming (''perfect rhyming'') is consciou ...
. They have two or more sequences of
sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...
s that require repositioning the tongue between syllables, then the same sounds are repeated in a different sequence. An example of this is the song "
Betty Botter" (), first published in 1899:
There are twisters that make use of
compound word
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or Sign language, sign) that consists of more than one Word stem, stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. C ...
s and their
stems, for example:
The following twister entered a contest in ''
Games Magazine'' on the November/December 1979 issue and was announced the winner on the March/April 1980 issue:
Some tongue twisters take the form of words or short phrases which become tongue twisters when repeated rapidly (the game is often expressed in the form "Say this phrase three (or five, or ten, etc.) times as fast as you can!"). Examples include:
* Toy boat
* Cricket critic
* Unique New York
*
A proper copper coffee pot
* Red leather, yellow leather
* Irish wristwatch, Swiss wristwatch
* Peggy Babcock
* Red lorry, yellow lorry
Some tongue twisters are used for speech practice and vocal warmup:
Tongue twisters are used to train pronunciation skills in non-native speakers:
Other types of tongue twisters derive their humor from producing vulgar results only when performed incorrectly:
Some twisters are amusing because they sound incorrect even when pronounced correctly:
In 2013, MIT researchers claimed that this is the trickiest twister to date:
Linguistics of tongue twisters
Phonemes
Based on the MIT confusion matrix of 1620 single phoneme errors, the phoneme with the greatest margin of speech error is ''l''
mistaken for ''r''
Other phonemes that had a high level of speech error include ''s''
mistaken for ''sh''
� ''f''
for ''p''
''r''
for ''l''
''w''
for ''r''
and many more.
These sounds are most likely to transform to a similar sound when placed in near vicinity of each other. Most of these mix-ups can be attributed to the two phonemes having similar areas of articulation in the mouth.
Pronunciation difficulty is also theorized to have an effect on tongue twisters.
For example, ''t''
is thought to be easier to pronounce than ''ch''
ʃ As a result, speakers may naturally transform ''ch''
ʃto ''t''
or when trying to pronounce certain tongue twisters.
Fortis and lenis
Fortis and lenis
In linguistics, ''fortis'' ( ; Latin for 'strong') and ''lenis'' (, ; Latin for 'weak'), sometimes identified with 'tense' and 'lax', are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis ...
are the classification of strong and weak consonants.
Some characteristics of strong consonants include:
* high frequency in a language
* earlier development in language acquisition
* lower placement on the
phonological hierarchy
It is common for more difficult sounds to be replaced with strong consonants in tongue twisters.
This is partially determinant of which sounds are most likely to transform to other sounds with linguistic confusion.
Other languages
Tongue twisters exist in many languages, such as , and .
The complexity of tongue twisters varies from language to language. For example, in
Luganda
Ganda or Luganda ( ; ) is a Bantu language spoken in the African Great Lakes region. It is one of the major languages in Uganda and is spoken by more than 5.56 million Ganda people, Baganda and other people principally in central Uganda, includ ...
vowels differ by length so tongue twisters exploit vowel length: "Akawala akaawa Kaawa kaawa akaawa ka wa?". Translation: "The girl who gave Kaawa bitter coffee, where is she from?"
Shibboleths
Shibboleth
A shibboleth ( ; ) is any custom or tradition—usually a choice of phrasing or single word—that distinguishes one group of people from another. Historically, shibboleths have been used as passwords, ways of self-identification, signals of l ...
s, that is, phrases in a language that are difficult for someone who is not a
native speaker
Native Speaker may refer to:
* ''Native Speaker'' (novel), a 1995 novel by Chang-Rae Lee
* ''Native Speaker'' (album), a 2011 album by Canadian band Braids
* Native speaker, a person using their first language or mother tongue
* Native spea ...
of that language to say might be regarded as a type of tongue-twist. An example is
Georgian ''baq'aq'i ts'q'alshi q'iq'inebs'' ("a frog croaks in the water"), in which ''q is a
uvular ejective. Another example, the
Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus
*Czech (surnam ...
and
Slovak ''
strč prst skrz krk'' ("stick a finger through the throat") is difficult for a non-native speaker due to the absence of vowels, although
syllabic r
A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''awful'', respectively. To represe ...
is a common sound in Czech, Slovak and some other
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...
.
Finger-fumblers
The
sign language
Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with #Non-manual elements, no ...
equivalent of a tongue twister is called a finger-fumbler. According to Susan Fischer, the phrase ''Good blood, bad blood'' is a tongue twister in English as well as a finger-fumbler in
ASL.
One-syllable article
One-syllable article is a form of Mandarin Chinese tongue twister, written in Classical Chinese. Due to Mandarin Chinese having only four tonal ranges (compared to nine in Cantonese, for example), these works sound like a work of one syllable in different tonal range when spoken in Mandarin, but are far more comprehensible when spoken in another dialect.
In popular culture
*In 1951
Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; ; January 18, 1911 – March 3, 1987) was an American actor, comedian, singer, and dancer. His performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire novelty songs.
Kaye starred ...
recorded a
Sylvia Fine song titled "Tongue Twisters".
*The children's books by
Dr. Seuss contain a significant number of tongue twisters, with ''
Oh Say Can You Say?'', and ''
Fox in Socks'' being the most extreme cases.
*In the 1952 film ''
Singin' in the Rain'', movie star Don Lockwood (
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran Kelly (August 23, 1912 – February 2, 1996) was an American dancer, actor, singer, director and choreographer. He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style and sought to create a new form of American dance accessibl ...
) uses tongue twisters, such as
Peter Piper
"Peter Piper" is an English-language nursery rhyme and well-known alliteration tongue-twister. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19745.
Lyrics
The traditional version, as published in John Harris' ''Peter Piper's Practical Principles of ...
, while learning proper diction so he can make the transition from
silent films
A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, wh ...
to "
talkies
A sound film is a Film, motion picture with synchronization, synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, bu ...
" in 1920s
Hollywood
Hollywood usually refers to:
* Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California
* Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States
Hollywood may also refer to:
Places United States
* Hollywood District (disambiguation)
* Hollywood ...
. He also turns one of them ("
Moses supposes his toeses are roses") into a song and dance number along with his best friend Cosmo Brown (
Donald O'Connor
Donald David Dixon Ronald O'Connor (August 28, 1925 – September 27, 2003) was an American dancer, singer and actor. He came to fame in a series of films in which he co-starred, in succession, with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talki ...
).
*In 1968,
Jack Webb
John Randolph Webb (April 2, 1920 – December 23, 1982) was an American actor, television producer, Television director, director, and screenwriter, most famous for his role as Joe Friday in the Dragnet (franchise), ''Dragnet'' franchise ...
guested on ''
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' is an American television talk show broadcast by NBC. The show was the third installment of ''The Tonight Show''. Hosted by Johnny Carson, it aired from October 1, 1962 to May 22, 1992, replacing ''T ...
'' and took part in a parody of ''
Dragnet''. The premise was Webb (as Sgt. Joe Friday) grilling Carson about "kleptomaniac Claude Cooper from Cleveland, who copped clean copper clappers kept in a closet." The sketch was regularly shown on anniversary specials.
*In the episode "You Said a Mouseful" from ''
Pinky and the Brain'', both Pinky and Brain go through a collage of tongue twisters that cover almost every category possible.
*The TV series ''
BoJack Horseman
''BoJack Horseman'' is an American adult animation, adult animated tragicomedy television series created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg. It stars the voices of Will Arnett, Amy Sedaris, Alison Brie, Paul F. Tompkins, and Aaron Paul. Set primarily in ...
'' contains increasingly convoluted tongue twisters as the show progresses. The lines are often delivered by Princess Carolyn, and a notable set involves the actress 'Courtney Portnoy', for example: "How would you enjoy joining Portnoy for a scorched soy porterhouse pork four-courser at Koi?" followed by "Glorify your source, but don't make it feel forced, of course. And try the borscht!"
*Many examples of tongue twisters can be found in
hip hop music
Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music Music genre, genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African Americans, African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide r ...
. A commonly used tongue twister is "Peter Piper", as seen in the 1986
Run-D.M.C. song "
Peter Piper
"Peter Piper" is an English-language nursery rhyme and well-known alliteration tongue-twister. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19745.
Lyrics
The traditional version, as published in John Harris' ''Peter Piper's Practical Principles of ...
".
See also
*
Alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of syllable-initial consonant sounds between nearby words, or of syllable-initial vowels if the syllables in question do not start with a consonant. It is often used as a literary device. A common example is " Pe ...
*
Announcer's test
*
Barbara's Rhubarb Bar
*
Malapropism
A malapropism (; also called a malaprop, acyrologia or Dogberryism) is the incorrect use of a word in place of a word with a similar sound, either unintentionally or for comedic effect, resulting in a nonsensical, often humorous utterance. An exam ...
*
Spoonerism
A spoonerism is an occurrence of speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words of a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and priest William Archibald Spooner, who report ...
*
Theophilus Thistle
References
External links
Interview with MIT researcher Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tongue Twister
Word games
tr:Tekerleme#Zor tekerlemeler