International Collection of Tongue Twisters (2018)

(tongue-twister.net)

21 points | by NaOH 4 days ago

6 comments

  • bryanrasmussen 45 minutes ago
    doesn't seem to have the most famous Danish tongue twister Rødgryde med Fløde https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCp3IDpQ6uc

    which is also really great because how often do you find a tongue twister that people brought up in the language can say without problems but foreigners out themselves and then all the native speakers can stand around and laugh and laugh and feel superior? It's really cool.

  • augusteo 6 hours ago
    Growing up in Indonesia, we had "Kuku kaki kakekku kayak kuku kaki kakakku" (my grandfather's toenails look like my older sibling's toenails). The repetitive k-sounds are brutal.

    What's interesting is how tongue twisters reveal what's phonetically tricky in each language. English struggles with s/sh transitions ("she sells seashells"). Indonesian targets the k-cluster combinations.

    Curious if there's research on whether practicing tongue twisters in a second language actually helps with accent reduction, or if it's just party tricks.

  • techsystems 4 hours ago
    Interesting stuff! Korean 3 is different than what I remember. My version is a bit purer of a tongue twister.

    들에 콩깍지 깐 콩깍지 안깐 콩깍지

    Grew up in a trilingual family, learned a couple more, definitely the hardest tongue twister, by far.

  • cr3cr3 5 hours ago
    I found it a lot more difficult to read any of the tongue twisters due websites color scheme. For a moment I thought there's an issue with my brain!
  • NetMageSCW 5 hours ago
    A lot of them seem less like tongue twisters and more like plays on homophones, for English, at least.
    • SwiftyBug 10 minutes ago
      Same for Portuguese. Some of them were quite easy to read out loud, but every word started with a `b`. That's not a tongue twister.
  • fuzztester 3 hours ago
    Here are some I remember:

    Black bug's blood and red bug's blood. (Trickier than it seems - try repeating it fast many times.)

    Round and round the rugged rock, the ragged rascal ran.