Janine in Murray, Kentucky, shares some favorite tongue twisters. There’s the one that helps you remember the four cardinal directions: Never Eat Sour Wheat. Her dad was fond of saying The stump thunk the skunk stunk and the skunk thunk the...
She sells seashells by the seashore. Who is the she in this tongue twister? Some claim it’s the young Mary Anning, who went on to become a famous 19th-century British paleontologist. Dubious perhaps, but the story of her rise from seaside...
Yvette, a biology professor in Bismarck, North Dakota, wonders why some words are more pleasurable to say than others. Among her favorites: ovoviviparous, which describes animals whose eggs hatch inside the mother’s body or shortly after being...
A listener shares a tongue twister he learned at the age of five: Theophilus Thistle sifter, while sifting a sieve of unsifted thistles, thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb. Another version goes If Theophilus Thistle, the...
She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are seashells I’m sure, so if she sells seashells on the seashore, then I’m sure she sells seashore shells. Some claim that this tongue twister is about the early life of 19th...
A box of biscuits, a box of mixed biscuits and a biscuit mixer is a tricky tongue twister due to its many consonant clusters. This is part of a complete episode.