Tongue Twisters or Hayakuchi Kotoba

OK today I am going to talk about English Tongue Twisters, these are a fun way to practice English pronunciation. There are hundreds of tongue twisters and in doing research for this post I found out that Japanese has them too, they are called hayakuchi kotoba.

My two favorite tongue twisters are:

She sells seashells by the seashore.
(good for practicing s and sh sound)

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? (good for ch and w)

I was a bit surprised to learn that the complete tongue twister is:

She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So if she sells shells on the seashore,
I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

Wow, that is difficult to say~!

And this:

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 wood as a woodchuck would
if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

Some other ones I just found that I like are:

Betty and Bob brought back blue balloons from the big bazaar.

or

Brad's big black bath brush broke.
(good for br and b)


Nine nice night nurses nursing nicely.
(good for n)

The two-twenty-two train tore through the tunnel.
(good for t)

Which witch wished which wicked wish?
(good for w and Halloween ^_-)

Friendly Frank flips fine flapjacks.
(good for f)

There are many more! Try these sites:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8136/tonguetwisters.html

Where I got many of these tongue twisters.

http://www.esl4kids.net/tongue.html

This is an alphabetical database for EFL teachers so you can search for whatever letter you need to practice to improve your pronunciation!

And this page has a list of international tongue twisters in 108 languages!!!

http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/index.htm

I like this one in Japanese ^^:

Nama mugi, nama gome, nama tamago.

Hope this helps!

Phil