The word snoop - Ursula Dubosarsky 2009

Tongue twisters
Say that again!

Say the following sentence as fast as you can three times.

Betty Botter bought a bit of bitter butter.

Not bad. Now try:

Bobby Blue blows blue bubbles.

Or even just:

Mixed biscuits, mixed biscuits.

Did you notice what happens to the words? For most people, the words all start to tumble together and trip over each other. This is something called a tongue twister. Tongue twisters are fun sentences or phrases that are hard for your tongue to say, especially if you try to say them quickly.

Your tongue is a very important part of your mouth for making sounds of words. Tongue twisters are tricky because they use words that repeat similar sounds. Look at all the b’s and it’s in Betty Botter bought a bit of bitter butter. And the i and s and x sounds in mixed bis cuits. When similar sounds come close together over and over again, our tongue and our brain get mixed up.

In the olden days, tongue twisters were thought to be magical, like spells. Nowadays they are mainly just for fun. But they can be used for special reasons as well. Actors often warm up their voices with tongue twisters. And sometimes speech therapists will use tongue twisters to help someone who finds it hard to make particular sounds.

Two very old and well-known tongue twisters you might have heard of in English are:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

and

She sells seashells by the seashore.

But all languages in the world have tongue twisters. Kelapa kepala,for example, is a tongue twister in Indonesian (it means something like “coconut head”). Maybe you know a tongue twister in another language?

Some poets have written amazing tongue twisters into their works. The English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote some totally tongue-twistery poems that are difficult to recite, but at the same time are very strange and beautiful. Try saying this out loud:

I caught this morning morning’s minion,

kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-

drawn falcon

Or this line by the poet Sylvia Plath:

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people

Those are more serious tongue twisters. But if you feel like something to make you laugh out loud, see if you can find a recording of “Tongue Twisters” sung by the comedian Danny Kaye. Try singing the two verses on the next page.

Moses supposes his toeses are roses

But Moses supposes erroneously

For Moses he knowses his toeses aren’t roses

As Moses supposes his toeses to be

Theda thought Thora was thumping her thimble

But Thomas thought Thora was thumping her drum

Said Theda if Thora’s not thumping her thimble

I think that she surely is thumping her thumb

Danny Kaye had such a twisty tongue that in a song called “Tchaikovsky and other Russians” he managed to name 54 Russian composers with very difficult names in 38 seconds!

The best fun, though, is making up your own tongue twisters. You could try using the sounds in your name. For example, if your name is Mike, you could say something like:

Mike makes mad mud cakes.

Or the Word Snoop could say:

Why would the weird Word Snoop loop the hoop?

Why indeed?

Go on, get your tongues twisting!