The Neuroscience of Tongue Twisters
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
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We’ve all been tripped up by tongue-twisters. That’s the whole point! But at a neuroscientific level, they’re as difficult to understand as they are to say.
Hosted by: Hank Green
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*No comment.*
a box of biscuits, a box of mixed biscuits, and a biscuit mixer, tell someone to repeat after me and say each and have them say them back one by one and then say the say them all at once.... most get a miskit bisker
Its something people can do with their kids as a tool to create habits. It also helps understanding mindfulness. This app was very help for me while going through a rough time. The pacing of habit building can be weird at times. It's very helpful for myself during depressive episode. It's not a tool for everyone.
I got Fabulous. A month ago, probably from your suggestion. Now I just have to open it.
Now that's weird, because I'm dyslexic yet so called 'tongue-twisters' are very easy for me. None of the examples gave me much/any difficulty. I can't get my head around formal English; nouns, verbs, adjectives etc just don't gel with me. Learning any foreign language or formal math/algebra is a nightmare; it's like asking someone who is colour-blind to sort and order items only by their colour. Very frustrating.
The bloopers of this one must be epic.
Tongue twisters are also a thing in signed languages. They call them finger fumblers. I might have heard of them from Crash Course.
I think it was one of Tom Scott's trivia games for me, but I'll have to check.
🤯🤯🤯🥳🥳🥳♥️
I immediately need to learn these!!
I paused the video to ask if this exact thing was a thing!
Yeah I think it was mentioned in Crash Course Linguistics?
I'm pretty sure this episode have a lot of outtakes. :D
Ironically, I have the easiest time saying a tongue twister on the first go.
It's the repeats that trip me up, even if I'm not going fast. If I'm reading a tongue twister word by word for the first time, each word just comes in as I read it, and say it.
When I try to repeat it, the words are much more likely to get mixed up in my head as they're percolating in my short term memory.
I like the German word for tongue twisters, "Zungenbrecher", literally *_tongue breakers_* 😆
In spanish those are called "traba lenguas" which translates to "tongue stoppers" or "tongue stuckers"
(Trabar means to stop or to get stucked)
@@Blacklight.2025 In Italian we call them "scioglilingua" which means tongue melters, something that melts your tongue.
Who could know more about tongue twisters but germans?)
Same in hungarian, we call them "nyelvtörő"😁
@@adamsmith1300 In der Tat ist die Indertat eine Tat die der Inder tat
Is a legit german sentence
I highly recommend the poem, "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenité. It's much more than a simple tongue twister, it's more of a jab at the seemingly silly rules of how words are written compared to how they are spoken in English. It's a fantastic way to practice your pronunciation.
Second! I used it in my voice and diction class for practice, as well as before going on stage for theater. Incredible tool, and crazy.
I'm about halfway through that now, and loving it! But being American, a few of the rhymes don't quite work as well for me. 🙂 (Most still do though)
Thanks for the recommendation, I did enjoy its verse and meter.
I'm crylaughing in my room right now because I keep saying "Toy Boit" oh my god I can't say toy boat fast.
Say "boat-toy" instead
ya it's a really good one
I don't care what anyone else says, "Irish wristwatch" is the hardest tongue twister. I can barely say it properly in my head
FACTS
If there's one benefit of my speech impediment, it's that I can say that tongue twister with no problems. Shout out to my childhood speech therapist who used that phrase with me every damn week!
I can say it but only at like half speed.
that's a great one. never heard it before
I was trying to figure out how that was hard to say. Then I realized I was saying "iris wristwatch" in my head. 🙃
"I'm not the pheasant plucker, I'm the pheasant pluckers' son, and I'm only plucking pheasants til the pheasant plucker comes."
Saw this given to a group of people, ages 12-68, and it's top 5 hardest I've ever laughed.
I'm a sock cutter. I cut socks. I'm the best damned sock cutter than ever cut socks.
I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit.
The one I learned was "I am a pheasant plucker, I pluck mother pheasants. I am a pleasant mother pheasants plucker."
4:42 "Forming habits is also hard."
Tell that to my crippling cocaine addiction
I tell that to *everyone's* cocaine addictions, and they're all so eager to hear it they tell me they'll "do lines"; so nice they'll queue up for advice!
You probably shouldn't have sign up for Fabulous then
Forming habits is hard, Mr. Cocaine Addiction.
Hi! I'm an opera singer, meaning I think about how sounds are created in the mouth (and brain!) for a living.Thinking about the psychology of this is totally fascinating, and looks at sound production in a different way than I'm used to. Thank you for sharing!
“Red Leather Yellow Leather” on repeat is a tough one.
Me, trilingual, and slowly digressing in each language steadily, and every sentence is a brain twister lol.
psych student stacy studies tongue twisters to twist tongues of swiss test study patients
Mudkip mudkip...mudkip!
Blaukraut bleibt blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid.
That's brilliant!
The more languages I’ve learned, I’ve actually gotten better with tongue twisters
I only speak two languages, but I've got worse at tongue twisters, even in my native tongue. So that's fun...
Signed languages also have a version of tongue-twisters, but they're called "finger fumblers," instead. And instead of being built on similar consonant and vowel sounds, they're built on hand shape and hand motion. So it's not just how the brain processes speech, per se, but *language*
“The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us” is my go-to tongue twister for vocal warm-ups.
I came up with a good tongue twister if anyone wants to try: "Sears fears spheres"
My unique TT's (1) "You only need two things in your tool box: Duct tape and WD-40, Duct Tape to stick the stuff that's unstuck & WD-40 to unstuck the stuff that sticks."
(2) Q: How much Ciabatta Bread could Chewbacca Chew, if Chewbacca could chew Ciabatta Bread? A: Wookie Roar
I’d love to see the bloopers of this video.
I think I'm one of the few people that doesn't struggle with most tongue twisters and can adapt to new ones pretty quickly. That seething sea ceaseth one was fine to me.
I can generally recite tongue twisters perfectly after a few practice attempts. But I also specifically taught myself to do so because, for some unknown reason, a kid who used to bully me on the bus hated them. So I memorized as many as I could to get him to go away.
Thanks for the useless life skill, random bully?
Can't wait to see this month's bloopers :D Nice work on those tongue twisters, Hank.
The 'pad tim' one didn't read too badly. Very nice. My favorite one is, "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" You can then continue with, "A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a wood-chuckin' woodchuck could, if a woodchuck could chuck wood." Preferably read aloud very fast. You can replace 'a wood-chukin' woodchuck' with 'he' for a better rhythm.
Forget about tongue twisters I can barely speak normally as it is
...mudkip.
Whats that mean exactly
@@randywa It's a Pokemon.
Anything’s a tongue twister when you’re trying to make conversation in a socially uncomfortable situation.
@@invisibleninja86 "What's your name?"
"Yes, please, thanks; me, too."
"...what?"
"I mean, uh... Dan. Your name is Dan -- I mean MY name is Dan!"
"...okay, then, nice to meet you, I'm going... over there now."
i hope there is a bloopers reel...
awwwwww
Tongue-twisters are a lot more difficult in some other languages, such as Polish.
Ironically it works the other way around as well, being unable to spell a word because it sounds so different from how it's written.
After 35 years it's still difficult for me to spell the name of the town my aunt lives in: "Szczedrzyk"
This was a very fun quirky one to cover, but also as you said possibly very useful research for people who struggle with speaking or processing language
Give us the outtakes!
Thanks!
Now that I think of it, I do stumble over tricky words in my native language ever since I started speaking English with my friends
One of my kids' books (Octopus Alone by Divya Srinavasan) has the phrase "slithering sea snakes" and it gets me every time! Doesn't help when you have a speech impediment, even a mostly controlled one, lol
I'll watch any video with Hank in it!
Toy boat x3 is the only one I can never get even with practice. A lot of tongue twisters I can figure out after a little practice
She sells sea shells by the seashore, but the value of these shells will fall
She was actually a real person who discovered marine fossills, but was discredited because she was a woman
How many takes do you think Hank took?
I think Hank took cinq takes.
Surprised Hank didn't bring up his own tongue-twister song, Pheasant Plucker.
It's basically genetic in my family that we constantly trip over our words, even if they aren't twisters.
Maybe you're speaking too fast. I trip over words constantly, it happened in my teens when I started speaking so fast almost no one could understand me. I still have that problem that only people to whom I talk regularly are used to how fast I talk.
@@norma8686 Sounds about right, at least for myself. Plus, a very mild form of cerebral palsy, I suppose. For my mom, I presume side effects of her medication. I don't know about the rest of my family, though.
I too am constantly getting my Murds Wixed, as I term it.
She sells seashells down by the sea shore. Sure, selling seashells down by the sea shore sounds selfishly surreptitious. But sea shells shan't separate from sea shoals themselves, so she shells out shillings, to scrounge up and sort out a sum of shiny and shoddy seashells to sell to shallow shoppers.
3:44 Since English isn't a royal language, I wonder how a tonal language like Chinese would be affected? Like a famous one involving tonal changes is "媽媽騎馬，馬慢，媽媽罵馬 (Ma1 ma1 qi2 ma3, ma3 man4, ma1 ma1 ma4 ma3; Mother rides a horse, the horse is slow, mother reprimands the horse)"
MISSED YOU HANK WELCOME BACK
where are the bloopers? we need them
Although tongue twisters are universal, I do believe some languages can produce harder ones than others depending on their phonetic inventory and their syllabic structure. English has an insane number of vowel sounds that are difficult to distinguish and produce to non-native speakers and a very complex syllabic structure, compared to say Spanish. With only five vowel sounds and virtually no consonant clusters, Spanish tongue twisters seem to cause less trouble than English or French ones. Now, languages like Polish and Georgian that are full of consonant clusters might be the hardest of all.
In some languages, tongue twister-like words/sentences may have actually been grammaticalised in that some languages don't allow certain consonants, like 's' and 'sh', in the same word. It's a bit like how a word like 'seashore' might be changed to 'sheashore' to make it easier to say. This is called 'consonant harmony' (and yes, vowel harmony is also a thing).
I want to see the outtakes for that first one!
What seems to trip me up with tongue twisters is that it *feels* like my brain is fast & mouth is slow, so that I'm thinking of the next syllable, but my gob is still stuck on the previous one.
THAT IS SO COOL!
Neat! By the way, I just want to share one of my favourite tongue twisters ever. It's "Nerhk-ser-'er'y ler-'er-gery chery-ker-'ery chyer-'er'y!" It's a Yurok language tongue twister, and it means three black small black-bears.
"toy boat" isnt about vowels.
Its about consonants.
It gets tongue tied because the T on the beginning and the end merge together so you end up with "Oi boat Toy Bow" etc
"Pad kid poured curd pulled cod" is tricky for a couple more reasons- it seems to start to evoke a visual representation but falls apart like a flakey white fish, and it evokes something sort of tricky to say that people are Alresford used to saying: "pulled pork" but then doesn't use that phrase. Instead it creates an image of something unimaginable "pulled cod."
blue looks rly good on hank
Fun. I am fluent in both English and Spanish. Tongue
twisters also say in both languages. I think in English
make same funny mistakes
think in Spanish also silly
mistakes. Pronunciation of
words is key. thank you for your gift
In japanase, the letters are combinations of vowels and consonants, so maybe that works a bit different in the brain as they are raised using these as one unit of a letter
The sea shells one I use a trick: 2 1 1 2 1 2, get it? Massive improvement, but it takes planning, so not the best strategy.
I think a lot of these tongue twisters are a matter of tongue and mouth locomotion and require more effort to reset to optimal position where fluid speech usually wouldn't require it.
The video says you get stuck in your brain, it's not a mouth parts issue.
@@norma8686
I personally find them much easier to mentally process, but yes, there appears to be a mental component and I should have said "partially a matter of". Moreover, Hank clearly states the science isn't complete.
I want to see an outtake video with Hank tripping over the tongue twisters.
3:43 Not all languages have vowels and consonants, such as sign languages.
The worst one that is easy to remember is "Red welly boots, yellow welly boots."
How many takes did saying all of those tongue twisters take?
The woodchuck one is my favourite
If you want to know what dyslexia feels like just imagine this but always.
Now that's weird, because I'm dyslexic yet so called 'tongue-twisters' are very easy for me. None of the examples gave me much/any difficulty. I can't get my head around formal English; nouns, verbs, adjectives etc just don't gel with me. Learning any foreign language or formal math/algebra is a nightmare; it's like asking someone who is colour-blind to sort and order items only by their colour. Very frustrating.
@@bikerfirefarter7280 Well, dyslexia comes in many forms, but I was referring to its usual symptoms: slow reading and difficulty understanding the written word.
For neurotypical people, it is the same with tongue-twisters: slower to read and harder to understand.
@@illesizs many forms, yes. common symptoms, not 'usual'. unfortunately it's a common misconception, often touted by people who cherry-pick and should know better.
I've been memorizing Bo Burnham's absurdly difficult raps recently and it's made every one of these examples so easy to say. I said the MIT one first try no problem. But try saying this at 110 beats per minute:
*"Is it part due to the fact that rap's elastic addict act is missing"*
its because your brain outside of your subconscious computing, literality auto corrects your sentences like your phone would to create a quick communicable message to send audibly through the methods you beautifully described. The expectation of what's to come from in your sentences is your subconscious understanding of previous communicational interactions; than, those such experiences, automatically from the subconscious, inferences your next words to than create a composable sentence of understanding based on its preprogrammed ability to fill in the gaps for the appropriate social conversation. Actively Thinking only turns the subconscious into conscious and since the subconscious is clearly in all neurological programming to convey to the conscious, the subconscious being the smart part of your brain; you trying too consciously articulate a full and understood linguistic sentence outside of your subconscious programming is like trying run without knowing how to walk yet. :) lol
I don't speak Korean, but classifying sounds based on mouth positioning reminds me of what I've heard about the hangeul writing system, if memory serves. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.
This episode is amazing
And I liked fabulous
The word ceaseth is a hard word to say in general.
My friend came up with this one: "Squished Swedish Fish."
Dutch tongue twister: Als een potvis in de pispot pist, heb je een pispot vol potvispis.
English translation: When a spermwhale pees in a toilet, you have a toilet filled with spermwhale pee.
Maybe another name for “tongue twisters” could be “brain busters?”
According to Guinness World Records, the most challenging tongue twister in English is saying "nispi" ten times fast.
You know what else is fabulous? Your thumbnails.
Clever edit at 3:11, almost discreet ;)
I thought about the tongue twister that goes "Clean clams crammed in clean cans" and was wondering if you replaced the first word, clean, with creamed would it be more difficult to say? What about, Creamed Clams Crammed In Clean Cans?
The sixth shiek's sixth sheep's sick
Good one!
Pad kid pulled curd poured cod or whatever it was broke my brain. It seemed easy until suddenly I couldn't speak words
"The brain processes consonants and vowels differently!"
Oh? Cool, cool... *WHAT IS Y.*
In linguistics (and I guess in this study too) vowels are not about letters. They're about sound.
As an epileptic, I would be interested to see if they can figure out what the heck is happening when I can't tind the words I'm looking for for days or weeks after a seizure
I wonder if understanding tongue twisters better would enable scientists to better undersrand any speech impediments.
I want to know how many out-takes is just Hank trying to say the tongue twisters
Sign Language "tongue twisters" are called "finger fumblers"
Hehe, I was going to say...
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck couldn't chuck wood
Stephanie didn't need you to make fun of her 😭
so similar sounds seem stressful, can consonant's consonance cause confusion? vowels vex verbiage? I'll allow I'll alliterate it all a little later...
Hi
I'm not the pheasant plucker, I'm the pheasant pluckers mate and I'm only plucking pheasant because the pheasant pluckers late.
I wasn’t notified.
how many outtakes for this video?
\
Perhaps the neurons associated with similar mouthsounds are physically close to each other in our brain - and even interconnected. So vocalizing similar sounds in quick succession leads to misfires among those neurons?
I wonder if this brain structure differentiation for the processing of vowels and consonants goes back to when we first started developing speech? The easiest way to code information into any format, be it digital or sound, is binary. Am I saying a vowel or a consonant? This structure develops and becomes more advanced at distinguishing them, then more advanced at distinguishing different sounds within them, allowing for the development of more complex words. That would make the vowel and consonant areas the binary systems of our brains' logic processing. Kind of neat to think about
well, every word and sentence in english is a tongue twister for my Brasilian brain.
Wonder how accents interact with this. Americans tend to stress broad vowels really strongly in a way that I just don't as an Irish person. The "scientifically toughest tongue twister" didn't seem all that tough to me, even repeating it a few times.
Correction: not all languages have consonnence and voyels, Arabic for instance don't have those
I watched and commented on this video about a week ago... At first, I was intriguingly frustrated by the "Seething Sea" tongue twister.... Honestly, I started to wonder if I could pronounce "ceaseth" or" sufficeth" (note: RUclips spellcheck does not like these words) on an individual basis....
A week later, and more importantly after I have slept (no surprise ), I can pull this particularly cheeky tongue twister off with proficiency.
Another good one is: I wish I could wash my Irish wrist watch. 5 times fast rules apply
do mute people also read tongue twisters slower? it'd be interesting to study that
Irish wristwatch.
Tongue twisters are always pretty fun, a personal favorite of mine is a couple of lyrics of a song. Not super hard but fun to try to sing to.
Mata mata wagamama baka ka na masaka
Mada mada naganaga manaba nakya dana
A nonsense song we used to sing at camp is one of my faves. We'd try to go as fast as possible while still being understandable. It's called "A Capital Ship"
Here's the first verse:
A capital ship for an ocean trip
Was the "Walloping Window Blind"
No wind that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the captain's mind
The man at the wheel was made to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow-ow-ow
Tho' it oft appeared when the gale had cleared
That he'd been in his bunk below
Pad kid poured cured pulled cod is easier than that clean clams crammed in clean cans to me
I thought being tongue tied was when you physically can't stick out your tongue because the lingual frenulum is too short?
This explains so much... Also helps explain some of the consonant morphology in Japanese (my 3rd language). Kinda wish I was able to be a subject for this research as this is very fascinating.
The Sixth Sheik's Sixth Sheep is Sick
How much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
A woodchuck could chuck all the way to Kudchuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
Rubber baby buggy bumpers.