30 days in November 8

So today is:

International Tongue Twister Day

I like tongue twisters and used to spend hours as a boy repeating as many tongue twisters as I could think of. Sometimes I got frustrated, but I think it helped a country from boy from Oxfordshire to get his head around pronunciation and enunciation. I’m still a bit of a stickler and hate the way the spoken language is going. Perhaps all those ‘youfs’ need to try out a few tongue twisters - that should sort out their lazy diction.

Anyway it must have done something to me because just the words alliteration and onomatopoeia always make me smile. Around the ragged rock the ragged rascal ran from the jingling and the tinkling of the bells, bells, bells.

I think that my first tongue twister was one my gran taught it to me on one of those dark wet afternoons before I went to school. It’s probably the best known of all tongue twisters, but it’s still pretty hard to get your lips around.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

When I was about six I learnt this one about woodchucks at school. I don’t think I knew what a woodchuck was but I still say it sometimes when I can’t sleep.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck

If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
As much wood as a woodchuck could chuck

If a woodchuck could chuck wood.

They don’t have to be very long to make them very hard. Note that you have to say it perfectly five times in a row for it to count.

Red leather, yellow leather.

Red leather, yellow leather.

Red leather, yellow leather.

Red leather, yellow leather.

Red leather, yellow leather.

Or

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Here’s a really hard one I’ve never really mastered.

Something in a thirty-acre thermal thicket of thorns and thistles thumped and thundered threatening the three-D thoughts of Matthew the thug - although, theatrically, it was only the thirteen-thousand thistles and thorns through the underneath of his thigh that the thirty year old thug thought of that morning.

And of course everone's favourite:

I am not the pheasant plucker,
I'm the pheasant plucker's mate.
I am only plucking pheasants
Because the pheasant plucker's late.