Categories
Interesting facts

Tongue twisters

She sells seashells on the seashore.

Tongue twisters – in any language – are a lot of fun, and they also provide us with opportunities to work on our diction and fluency. Often, they rely on the speaker alternating rapidly between phonemes that are similar, but different. Frequently they also use a mixture of alliteration and rhyme.

Tongue twisters became extremely popular staples of English-language humour in the nineteenth century, and they exist in other languages too. In Spanish, a tongue twister is a trabalenguas (tongue jammer), for example; and the sign language version of a tongue twister is known as a “finger fumbler”.

Experiments conducted in-house at 101translations seem to suggest that tongue twisters are often easier to enunciate in one’s second language. Contact us for details!

Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/she-sells-sea-shells-on-the-sea-shore-text-schbWii1C4U

Latest Post

The Importance of Local Spelling
Certain languages, like Portuguese, Spanish and English – but also many others – are spoken…
Read More
101translations
Fire
Humanity’s taming of fire was a decisive step forward in terms of cultural and technological…
Read More
101translations
Anne Lister and ‘Crypt Hand’
Anne Lister, born in 1791 into a wealthy Yorkshire family, grew up to manage the…
Read More
101translations