Tongue Twisters

SHARPENING UP ARTICULATION

If the exercises you do to improve articulation are fun they will be easy to remember, and you will then
be able to use all of your physical resources for effective speaking.

Start the exercise slowly and gradually build up on your speed. Keep the sounds cler. Make sure your
tongue and lips are relaxed.

UPPER & LOWE LIPS

Repeating sounds like: ‘tp’ ‘b’ ‘m’ ‘wh’, will help lips mobility

 Peter piper picked a peck of pepper. Peter piper a peck of pickled pepper. If peter piper picked a
peck of the pickled pepper, where’s the peck of pickled pepper peter piper picked?
 Wires wives whise whistle while weaving worsted waistcoats.
 Wise is wound around the tree.
 Wise wives whistle while wearing worsted waistcoats.
 Symmetric shared memory multiprocessor system.
 Are you copper bottoming ‘em, my man? ‘ ‘ NO, I’m alumining ‘em, mum.’
 A box of mixed biscuits and biscuit mixer.
 Can you imagine an imaginary menagerie manager, imagining managing an imaginary
menagerie?
 Managing your manager makes managing yourself, managing others, and his managing you,
much more managebale.
 Many an anemone sees an enemone.
 Many an anemone seen an enemy anemone.
 Once upon the barren moor there dwelt a bear; also a boar. The bear could not bear the boar.
The boar thought the bear a bore. At last the bear could bear no more the boar that bored him
on the moor, and so one morn he bored the boar. The boar will not bore the bear no more.
 A plain pinewood police van, privately packed with protesting passangers, plies periodically to
plymouthprison.
 Why whistle the thistle when thither it goes, for whither the thistle blows nobody knows, so
shiftily drifting the thistle-down white will float o’er the heather snd into the night.

TONGUE TIP &UPPER TEETH RIDGE

Repeating sounds like: ‘t’ ‘d’ ‘1’ ‘n’ ‘r’ ‘s’ ‘z’ for faulty ‘s’ and ‘r’

 Red lorry, yellow lorry.

 Strange stategic statistics.
 A nightingale knew no night was nicer that a nice night to sing his nocturnal.
 A purely rural duel truly plural is better than a purely plural dual truly rural.
  A tutor was tutoring two tooters to toot. Said the tutor: ‘ls is not easier to hoot, than to tutor
two tooters to toot?’
 A ship saileth south soon.
 Choosing stew Tuesday. Tuesday is stew day.
 Diligence – dismisseth despondency.
 I want a dozen double damask dinner napkins.
 The dustman daily does his duty to dislodge the dirty dust deposited in disgusting dusty
dustbins.
 Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal runs his truly rural race.
 Sister susie sewing shirts for soldiers, such silky, soft, short shirts our sister susie sews. Some
soldiers said to cecil that they’d rather sleep on thistle, than the silky, soft, short shirts ou sister
Susie sews.
 Twenty talented teachers teaching tiny tots their twice times table.

BACK OF THE TONGUE & SOFT PALATE

Repeating sound like: ‘k’ ‘g’ ‘ng’, will help for ‘ing’ sounds, nasality, and a weak soft palate.

 Unique New York.

 A cricket critic cricked his neck at a critical cricket match.
 A Glasgow glazier’s gloriously green glass gas-globes.
 A canner, exceedingly canny, one day remarked to his Granny:
A canner can, can anything he can,
But a canner can’t can a can, can he?’
 All I want is a proper cup of coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot. If I can’t have a proper
cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea.
 How may cuckoos could a good cook cook if a good cook could cook cuckoos? As many cuckoos
as a good cook could cook if a good cook could find cuckoos.
 The skunk sat on the stump and the stump stunk, but the stump thunk the stunk stunk.
 The archbishop’s cat crept craftily into Canterbury cathedral crypt causing cataclysmal chaos in
clerical circles by keeping cunningly concealed.
 She stood on the balcony inexplicably mimicking him hiccupping and welcoming him in.
 The conundrum constructed by the communist was catastrophical.
 Success comes in cans, not in cannots.
 Underground railway escalators are mechanisms of great engineering practicability.

TONGUE TIP & UPPEER TEETH

Repeating sound like: ‘th’

 Red leather, yellow leather.

 Tom threw Tim three thumb tacks.
 The seething sea ceaseth seething.
  The Leith police dismisseth us and that sufficeth us.
 The sixth sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.
 I buy my clothes from Theophilus Thistlethwaite, the clothier, at 33 South Twelfth Street.
 Sir Cecil Thistlethwaite, the celebrated theological statistician.
 Theophilus Thistledown, the successful thistle sifter, in sifting a sieve of unsifted thistle,
thrust 3,000 thistles into his thumb, if, then, Theophilus Thistledown, the successful thistle
sifter, thrust 3,000 thistle through the thick of his thumb, see that thou, in sifting a sieve of
thistles, do not get the unsifted thistles stuck in thy thumb.
 I thought I heard the thumb and thud of 30 thick – shod hoofs, like 30,000 hailstones
thundering on the roofs; I think the thing I thought I heard was Arthur doing sums, thudding
with his thick soled boots, and thumping with his thumbs.
Lower lip & Upper Teeth
Repeating sounds like ‘f’ and ‘v’

 A flea and a fly got lost in a flue:

Said the fly. ‘let us fly’,

So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

 He generally reads regularly in a government library particularly rich in Coptic manuscripts, except
during the month of February.
 Thirty thirsty fellows thought they would find cider at ‘the thistle’ in the thicket, but they found that
their forefathers had got there before them and had not left a thimble-full for thirty thirsty fellows.
 Where ignorance predominates, vulgarity invariably asserts itself.

Tongue Blade & Front of Hard Palate

Repeating sounds like: ‘ch’ ‘ge’ ‘sh’ ‘zh’ – will help with ‘s’ and ‘sh’ sounds

 Does this shop still stock silk shirts?

 When does the wristwatch strap shop shut?
 Which wrist watches are Swiss Wrist Watches?
 A selfish shellfish smelt a stale fish. If the stale fish was a Smelt, then the selfish shellfish smelt a
Smelt.
 If a Woodchuck could chuck wood,
How much wood would a Woodchuck chuck

If a woodchuck could chuck wood?

 She sells sea shells on the sea-shore:

But the shells she sells on the sea-shore,
 are sea-shore shells I’m sure.

Open Resonator
Repeating sounds like: ‘h’

 Hurricanes hardly ever happen in Hertfordshire, Herefordshire and Hampshire.

 Hugh was hewn down the yew you used to view in youthful years.
 The hedge hindered the homicide from hurting himself.
 Last year I could not hear with either ear.
 A hundred air-inhaling elephants.

Vowel Sounds
‘oo’ sounds

 The gloom of the sea, the gloom of the sky, hung brooding over all; the
seagulls knew and landwards flew, swooping with muted call.
 Oh for a book and shady nook, to read of the new and the old, for a jolly good
book whereon to look is better to me than gold.

Vowel Sounds
‘ah’ and ‘ing’ sounds

 I know a place called Warling, and it comes into my mind,

That for such a place called Warling it is hard a rhyme to find.

So try calling, calling, calling,

And bawling, bawling, bawling;

 Make a noise quite appalling, like an old cat caterwauling.

But the game is most enthralling, and you will chance to find a

rhyme.

Vowel Sounds
‘u’ & ‘ing’ sounds

 Grumbling, stumbling, fumbling all day,

Fluttering, stuttering, muttering away,

Rustling, hustling, bustling as it flows,

That is how the brook talks, bubbling as it goes.

Vowel Sounds
‘oi’ sounds

 A little boy whose name is Roy, once had a toy, like you and I.
There was a coil which needed oil, he hated toil and left it dry.

The engine boiled, the toy was spoiled, (its works were coiled).

He laid it by.

Additional ‘Twisters’ For Articulation Clarity Of Speech

 The antiquarian society’ tends to harbor extraordinary personages of peculiar temperaments.

 He had been quick to familiarize himself with early developments of the radio and in consequence
was sent as a delegate to international conferences.
 The rhetorical verbosity of the Galdstoninan parliamentarians completely bewildered their mentally
inferior contemporaries.

These are just a few of many examples. For fun and clear speech work through one of the suggested
books of tongue twisters:

A twister of Twists, a Tangier of Tongues. A Schwartz – A Deutsche,

ISBN -0-233-96546-7

Anthology of British Tounge-Twisters – k Parkin – Samuel French Ltd,

Isbn 0-573-09028-9