After our chat about tongue twisters, a Chicago, Illinois, listener shares one that looks much easier than it sounds: Irish wristwatch. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Say “Irish Wristwatch” Five Times...
Names don’t always mean what you think they mean. Main Street in San Francisco is named after businessman Charles Main, and Snowflake, Arizona, honors two guys named Snow and Flake. Plus, big words for small people: A colorful new book...
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...