English Tongue Twisters
(I think I finally fixed the audio for good now.)
AND, I've got stopwatches that work great!
This page and content by Leon of Leon's Planet.  ©2009 to present

...and Alliterations!

First, we'll start with a few common tongue twisters.
(Leon's original tongue twisters are below.)

Go directly to the "Ultimate Tongue Twister of All Time!"  [I challenge you!]

RE:  Alliterations
 (for English Language Arts learners & teachers)
An 'alliteration' is a collection of two or more words with the same beginning sound (in the same sentence or phrase)
There are two alliterations below:  (1) She, shells, shore; (2) sells, sea, sea.

1.  She sells sea shells by the sea shore.

(click to download audio file). Time yourself. See if you can be faster than me!

Alliteration (below):  Peter, piper, picked, peck, pickled, peppers.

2.  Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.  Now if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many peppers did Peter Piper pick?

(click to download audio file). Time yourself. See if you can be faster than me!

Alliterations (below):  (1) woodchuck, wood, would; (2) woodchuck, chuck

3.  If a woodchuck could chuck wood, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck? A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

(click to download audio file). Time yourself. See if you can be faster than me!

Here some original tongue twisters
that I (Leon) have invented.
(Have a try!  And improve your pronunciation with practice!)

© 2009-present

For teaching the and phonemes:

First start with :

-  Three thin thieves thought a thousand thoughts.  Now if three thin thieves thought a thousand thoughts, how many thoughts did each thief think?

After the students master that one, move on to :

-  That which is theirs is neither more nor less than that which is thine.

After the students master that both those above, start mixing and :

-  This thing and that thing are better than those things.  (...easy for native speakers, but not so easy for none natives).

-  The thin thief went through that thicket over there.

If you really want to get tricky, add /t/ and /d/...

- A thorn adorned a thicket.

- If you buy a ticket to see the thicket, you get a thorn to adorn your thicket ticket.

- Charles Dickens had a thick thicket, which was adorned by a thousand thorns, and those thorns were adorned by a thousand tickets.  He called it the "Dickens Ticket Thicket", and the Dickens Ticket Thicket was so thick that in the thick and thin of things I think it was the thickest ticket thicket that I'd ever seen.

And if you are an English teacher or English student in China, Japan, Korea, or any Spanish-speaking nation, you can really confuse the heck out of the students by doing a tongue twister with various combinations of /s/ and and and .  In Korea, where students are often heard to say things like, "Sank you," and "I sink you should...", I would work on the /s/ and .

I suggest one starts with some easy tongue twisters, then get progressively harder (and longer):

-  Theodore sees a door.

-  Theodore sees a door and she adores Theodore.

-  I sank you and you thanked me.

-  I sank you and you thanked me; I think I'll sink you again.

-  I thought I shot a dot.

-  I thought I sought a shot of something super strong, but what I think I thought, and what I should have thought are surely not things that I like to think about for very long.

ADVANCED TONGUE TWISTERS:

-  I thought I sought a shot, but I sought a thought instead.  And the thought I sought was not a shot, but a thimble and a thread.

-  She sees the three seas, and he sees that she sees what she sees when she sees the three seas.

The ultimate tongue twister of all time:

-  I think that a thick, sick, chic chick surely, thoroughly sank its shank into the tank and drank.

How about some /f/ tongue twisters?  [In Chinese, there is an /f/ phoneme, but in Korean and Japanese, there is no /f/ phoneme, which makes me wonder why they transliterate Mt. Fuji as "Mt. Fuji", instead of the correct, "Mt. Huji".]

The following tongue twisters is especially for the Japanese students:

-  Five funny fairies found five funny frogs on Mount Huji. [NOT FUJI!!!!!]

-  Hu had the flu, and when Hu flew the flu flew.

-  Fu found four frosty frappuccinos, and who did he find with them?  Four fabulous females.

-  The foreheads of four heads were fairly hairy for foreheads.

For the Koreans, who have problems with /f/ and /p/...

-  The four fleas are poor fleas.

-  Let the four poor fleas flee, please.

-  The four fathers found that poor fathers had forefathers who were poor fathers, too. 

-  Puns are fun, so have some fun with five fun puns!  [see my Puns Page]

None of the following languages:  Korean, Japanese, Chinese, have the phoneme /v/, but the Koreans use /b/ for /v/, and the Chinese use /w/ for /v/.  I don't know what the Japanese do.

So, for the Koreans:

-  I put some vile bile in a file and labeled it the "Vile Bile" file.

-  "Berries vary very much," said the berry fairy very well.

-  One should wear one's best vest for the fest.  In other words, one should wear one's best fest vest.

And, for the Chinese:

-  The best fest in the West is the Vest Fest.

-  I'm very wary of very scary films.

-  The very vile villain vied very vehemently for his village .

-  Valerie values volleyball very much.

And, for the Spanish-speakers:

-  She's says she's special since she's especially smart!

-  She spies the special school, which is especially special because of the especially special students, who study especially studiously.

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