When a Twister, a-Twisting, Will Twist a Twist

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. How are you?

This is Janine from Murray, Kentucky.

Hi, Janine.

Great.

Welcome to the show. What’s up?

I was calling because I was curious to know how tongue twisters had originated. Because growing up, my dad would say these weird tongue twisters to me. And I held on to every word he said. And I would remember the words and practice them. And, you know, I think it’s kind of a lost trait. I say them to my kids. They’re young adults now, but they look at me like I’m crazy. But I think they’re kind of fun. And I did a little research on my own, and I found out that they originated to help people remember things, such as north, southeast, and west, for instance, you know, never eat sour wheat. So I thought it was kind of fun, and I wanted to find out what you guys thought.

Well, Janine, if you’ve memorized some and say them on a regular basis, you know we’re going to want you to share some of them.

Oh, of course. I got two in mind.

Okay.

Let’s hear it.

All right. The first one is, are you the kid that told the kid that I’m the kid that hit the kid? Because if you’re the kid that told the kid that I’m the kid that hit the kid, I’m going to hit you, kid.

I never heard that one.

Are you the kid that told the kid that I’m the kid that hit the kid?

What’s the other one?

I thought that one was really funny.

That’s great.

My dad had a fun sense of humor. So that’s where I get that from. And the other one is, the skunk stunk, the stump stunk. And the stump stunk, the skunk stunk. I don’t want to meet that skunk or that stump.

Me neither.

Oh, my goodness. Those are rich.

So I thought those were fun. Yeah, there’s a lot of reasons that people do tongue twisters. Partly just the same reason that we’re doing them now is because they’re fun. Because people mess up. And we like to see each other mess up. We like it when other people look a little foolish. I held on to every word of that, I’ll tell you. And we like to laugh at ourselves, frankly.

Oh, absolutely. When we mess up, we giggle at ourselves on how silly we feel. And we don’t mind very much that we tried something and it didn’t work out. And we’ll keep at it until we get good at it. And that’s the other thing. People like to be challenged. They like it when stuff is hard. And then they like to get good at hard things. And tongue twisters are really, you know, there’s something you can really practice and get good at. And you feel proud of yourself, right?

Oh, yeah. As a kid, it was fun because you never knew what was going to come out of a kid’s mouth, you know. But, Martha, you know, in radio and speeches, which you and I both do, we speak at events all around the country. And we, sometimes in preparation before we go out in front of crowds, we do these limbering exercises with our mouths and maybe say rubber baby buggy bumpers or something like that, right?

All I want is a proper cup of coffee. All I want is a proper cup of coffee pot. Every language I’ve looked into has these. French is a language that I know fairly well. And one I know in French is 5 or 6 officers are walking in soixante. 5 or 6 officers are walking in soixante. Something like that. And there’s a longer version, which is like this whole story.

Janine, one of the things that I really liked about the two that you repeated is that they’re visual. You know, some of these are just kind of arbitrary. And, you know, the words are just thrown in there, so they don’t make a whole lot of sense. But I love the ones that have images in them or just things that you can think about. I’m thinking about a Spanish one that goes, Pepe Pecas Pica Papas con Pico con Pico Pica Paz.

Oh, no. Basically, it translates as Joe Freckles chops potatoes with a pick, and with a pick, Joe Freckles chops a potato. You know, you can picture that. Pepe, papa, papa, papa, pico.

So just to kind of bring this around, you were asking about origins. The earliest one that I know of, and I’m sure they’re older than this, probably as far back as humans could speak, they were challenging each other to say difficult things. There was a book published mostly in Latin by a fellow whose name was John Wallace, published in Oxford in England. And the Latin title is Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae. Basically, it means English language grammar. And he’s got this long, long passage. Interestingly enough, it’s about twisting. And it goes something like, when a twister a twisting will twist him a twist. For the twisting of his twist he three times doth entwist. But if one of the twists of the twist do entwist, the twine that entwisteth untwisteth the twist. And he’s got paragraphs more of this. But most of the book is in Latin, except for like this passage. And he also has a French version of this. And so this is kind of not the earliest tongue twister that we know, but it’s kind of like this real nice marker from about 400 years ago, where it kind of establishes this real nice middle point of tongue twisters, and it’s about twisting. That’s interesting.

Yeah. By the way, the famous Peter Piper one, you can find a really beautifully done book from 1824. It’s a collection of tongue twisters. It’s called Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation. And it’s in there.

Oh, that sounds adorable.

And they’re all still really fun. And you can find beautiful versions of it online at Gutenberg and Internet Archive. Just gorgeous, gorgeous modern recreations of it. Just in beautiful typefaces and ink drawings and so forth.

That’s interesting. Thank you so much for sharing your memories and your tongue twisters with us. We really appreciate it. Thanks for your time, guys.

All right, you take care of yourself. You have a great day.

You too. Bye-bye.

You too, Janine. Bye-bye. Well, whether your name is Theophilus Thistle or Sheba Sherman Shelley or Shrewd Simon Short, we’d love to hear from you, either your favorite tongue twisters or other thoughts about language. So give us a call at 877-929-9673.