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Tongue twisters are difficult to pronounce and used for humor, public speaking, and language learning. They help understand speech processing and focus on sound sequences that are hard to switch between, such as /s/ and /sh/. Other challenges include changing word order, perfect rhymes, homophones, and various combinations of these.
A tongue twister is a series of words or a longer piece, such as a poem, constructed to be very difficult to pronounce correctly. Tongue twisters are used to create humor by challenging someone to repeat them very quickly and listening to the amusing results, as well as by public speakers and spoken language learners to increase verbal agility. Tongue twisters are also helpful in understanding how we process speech – they have been used in scientific research to support the claim that silent reading involves articulation. It turns out that there are some sound sequences that are difficult to switch between due to changing positions in the mouth and/or auditory feedback of sound similarities, and tongue twisters focus on these. Sometimes the visual aspect of the words is an added factor.
Switching from a single sound to a blend or digraph. Switching between /s/ and /sh/ is quite complicated, so you’ll find many tongue twisters that play on this sound combination: sell shells by the sea. and the sixth sheikh’s sixth sheep is sick. In the following tongue twister, we see a shift between /k/ and two mixes: /kr/ and /kl/: how can a clam cram into a clean crema?
Order changed. Another tricky change occurs when two words have the same sounds in opposite order. Juxtaposing these words in a tongue twister means that we are still hearing auditory feedback and experiencing the muscle memory of pronouncing the first sound while reading the second, and this creates confusion. Here’s an example: a witty cricket critic. Both words have the blend /kr/ and the single consonant sounds /k/ and /t/, but in cricket /kr/, /k/, then /t/ appear; while in the critique, /kr/, /t/, then /k/ appear.
Similar but different. Another tricky pronunciation situation is alternating between words that are perfect rhymes, i.e. only the starting sound is different, or words where only the ending sound is different. Perhaps it’s distinguishing differences despite similarities that cause the complications in these tongue twisters. This tongue twister demonstrates both situations:
Denise sees the fleece,
Denise sees fleas.
At least Denise could sneeze
and feed and freeze the fleas.
homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same but spell differently, and recognizing a word that looks different but sounds like a word we’ve already said seems to increase the complexity of pronunciation. The following tongue twister is credited to Bill Waterson in a cartoon “Calvin and Hobbes” and demonstrates both homophones and perfect rhymes:
How many boards
Could the Mongols hoard?
What if the Mongol hordes are bored?
Various combinations. The following tongue twister employs words that are homophones; displacement of the initial mixtures /st/, /sh/ and /ch/; and perfect rhymes all in eleven words: if Stu chews on shoes, should Stu choose the shoes she chews on?
