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| Saturday, December
28, 2002 |
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WHEN most people think of tongue-twisters, it is a childhood image which comes to mind: attempting to recite a tricky rhyme or phrase as fast as possible without tripping up over the verbal challenges and hurdles lurking within such tongue-tying sentences as Peter Piper Picked A Pickled Pepper.By combining the effects of alliteration, particularly of similar but not identical sounds, and with the phrase designed such that it is made very easy to slip (perhaps making a spoonerism) accidentally, these sentences and poems can be guaranteed to provide lots of fun and laughter.But tongue-twisters have a lot more to them than that. They serve a practical purpose in practising pronunciation. English tongue-twisters may be used by foreign students of English to improve their accent, actors who need to develop a certain accent, and by speech therapists to help those with speech difficulties.When their use is for one of these more serious reasons then tongue-twisters are generally subdivided into categories, classifying them by the particular vowel or consonant sounds they concentrate on. The Peter Piper one, for example, clearly provides practice for the P sound. |
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Popular tongue-twisters Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers? If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? *** She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are surely seashells. So if she sells shells on the seashore, I'm sure she sells seashore shells. *** How much wood would a woodchuck chuck If a woodchuck could chuck wood? He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, And chuck as much as a woodchuck would If a woodchuck could chuck wood. Tongue-twisting poems Betty Botter had some butter, "But," she said, "this butter's bitter .If I bake this bitter butter, It would make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter, That would make my batter better. "So she bought a bit of butter — Better than her bitter butter— And she baked it in her batter; And the batter was not bitter. So 'twas better Betty Botter Bought a bit of better butter. *** Mr See owned a saw. And Mr Soar owned a seesaw. Now, See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw Before Soar saw See, Which made Soar sore. Had Soar seen See's saw Before See sawed Soar's seesaw, See's saw would not have sawed Soar's seesaw. So See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw. But it was sad to see Soar so sore Just because See's saw
sawed Soar's seesaw. |
