Good Morning John. People will often say, down in the comments, that I'm pretty good
at talking really fast and by now, I kinda agree - I've had a lot of practice. But John
there are a few secrets to being able to talk really well, really fast.
One of them you can see here in this outtakes video that we did, in which you see the number
of times that we screw up. But another of the secrets has to do with cadance, and fricatives,
and posives and stops. This has led me into a bit of an obsession with tongue twisters
and that is why I know what a sibilant fricative is. A fricative is a noise that you make by
putting two parts of your mouth very close together and blowing air through them. Basically.
Like 'F' or 'Th' or 'S' or 'Sh'. Fricatives are one of the most complicated things that
your mouth will ever do. Even if you are thinking of something dirty, fricatives are more complicated
than that.
So when I say "She sells sea shells by the sea shore", I'm alternating between two very
similar sibilant fricatives and the difference is so slight that my brain gets confused about
which one I should be doing next. Which is why when I say "the shells she sells are sea
shore shells", "shells, the shells she shells, the shell she sells are sea shore, the shells
she, the shells she sells are sea shore shells" which I've had much less practice at, I screw
up so much. Interestingly, the things that your tongue have to do play a part in tongue
twisters but it is probably more of a mind twister than a tongue twister. People reading
tongue twisters silently, actually take longer to read tongue twisters than non-tongue twisting
sentances. I know its weird!
Other fricatives are also hard like "f" but its even harder when you're mixing fricatives
like "f" and "Sh", like "fisherman". Like "The fisherman named fisher who was fishing
for fish in a fisher until a fish with a grin pulled fisher the fisherman in. Now they're
fishing for fisher in the fisher". That tongue twister relies on more than fricatives, it
also relies on homophones words that are different but sound exactly the same.
And then we have a thing that I can't find a name for so I've been calling Pseudophones.
Pseudophones are words that are similar but not quite the same and if you say them wrong,
everything explodes. For example my absolute favourite tongue twister "I slit the sheet,
the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit". The pseudophones in this case being
slit, sheet and sit. What's worse is that there are several other pseudophones like
seat, sleet and another one and the more frequently you say those other pseudophones, the more
frequently you will accidentally jump to them while you're talking about the "slitted sheet".
The reason why this is my favourite tongue twister is because people always end up "S***ing
on the slitted sheet". Another important note about the "slitted sheet" is that its entirely
iambic. Meaning that accented and non accented words alternate and that almost every accent
falls on a pseudophone: "I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet
I sit".
Which brings me to what it is I think is the most important point about tongue twisters.
The recognised hardest tongue twisters are things like the "sheiks sixth sick sheep"
but you never hear about the "sheiks sixth sick sheep". Just having a dense forest of
sibilant fricatives is, you know, that's hard but it's not interesting. So what is interesting
about tongue twisters? Why do we do it? Why do we have them and why are they prevalent
in every single language including American Sign Language. Finger fumblers: they have
them in sign language too.
You can analyse all day why tongue twisters are hard but the reason why we do them is
because they're fun. The thing that our mouth and our vocal cords and our diaphragm and
our lungs all do together to make words, is really amazing. And you could easily argue
that it is what makes us special as a species. When you start doing tongue twisters you start
to understand and see how complicated and beautiful and interesting it all is. Which
is why I reached out to Nerdfighteria on Twitter and I asked people to give me tongue twisters
in their native language because even if you don't understand what these people are saying,
the things that their mouths are doing are amazing. So real quick, I just wanted to share
a few of em: [A Tongue Twister in Palestinian Arabic]
[A Tongue Twister in Dutch] [A Tongue Twister in Icelandic]
[A Tongue Twister in Amahric] [A Tongue Twister in French]
[A Tongue Twister in Cantonese] [A Tongue Twister in Norwegian]
You can see, by watching this, that there is something universal about tongue twisters
and its not just sibilant fricatives. The universal thing really is humanity and that
we enjoy having fun. There's some more non-English tongue twisters in my pants and John if you
don't have a copy of 'Fox in Socks', I'm sending my copy for Henry. John, I'll see you on Wednesday.
Thank you for the assistance of Professor of Linguistics Joel Anderson and also to his
friend Anne for getting him in touch with me. And to all of you in the comments who
are shouting right now that I must be punished for making a video that is longer than four
minutes, I must remind you of the Nerdfighter montage exception and thus I remain punishment
free. Now I have a final tongue twister for you: "Betty Botter bought some butter, 'But,'
she said, 'the butter's bitter; If I put it in my batter, It will make my batter bitter;
But a bit of better butter, will make my batter better.' So she bought some better butter,
Better than the bitter butter, And she put it in her batter, And her batter was not bitter;
So 'twas better Betty Botter Bought a bit of better butter."