Sometimes, we like to have a bit of fun at TRANSLIT.
An idea to carry out a social experiment came after stumbling across a few tongue twisters.
It seemed easy at the beginning, but turned out to be a somewhat difficult task for non-native speakers and even for Irish and American people.
We asked a number of international and local students at the University of Limerick to read out loud English alphabet and a few tongue twisters in front of a camera.
See what happened:
Tongue Twisters are a nice way to have fun while testing our abilities with language. As you can see, students struggled to read them
[GAME] Try it yourself with this 6 tongue twisters !
1 – Betty Botter bought some butter but, said she, the butter’s bitter.
If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter will make my bitter batter better.
So she bought some better butter, better than the bitter butter,
put it in her bitter batter, made her bitter batter better.
So ‘t was better Betty Botter bought some better butter.
2 – When a doctor doctors a doctor,does the doctor doing the doctoring
doctor as the doctor being doctored wants to be doctored or
does the doctor doing the doctoring doctor as he wants to doctor?
3 – The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.
4 – I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop. Where she sits she shines, and where she shine
she sits.
5 – Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.
6 – How many cookies could a good cook cook If a good cook could cook cookies? A good
cook could cook as much cookies as a good cook who could cook cookies.
As you can see, the tongue twister can be used as pronunciation exercises in learning foreign language. They are also used as diction exercises by people with speaking in public (presenters, actors…)
So now, you know what you have to do to become familiar with the pronunciation and be more comfortable. But be careful, if people around you start to laugh it is not necessarily because it is mispronounced.. some tongue twister are constructed to bring a person to say obscenity when spoken repeatedly. You are warned!
