How to make your own Tongue-Twisters

Making your own tongue-twister might be easier than you think. For those who aren't familiar with tongue twisters, heres a definition: A tongue-twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly. Tongue-twisters may rely on similar but distinct phonemes. That being said, a well-known tongue-twister is the Peter Piper tongue-twister

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pecks of pickled peppers could Peter Piper pick, if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers?

After you memorize something like this, the next step is to say it as fast as your mouth can without slurring or rearanging the words. Because of the series of words starting with the same letter, this is easier said than done. Now, on to making your own tongue twister. I'll break it down for you so its very easy. This is a twister that I made into an alliteration poem years ago that focuses on the letter B.

The bottle breaking, brick breaking, brandy buying, bully being bandits of Baily-Ben.

This is a very simple and easy to say tongue-twister. Now I'll break it this down to show how easy it is to create. If you have any innate creativity, you likely already know how to make a tongue-twister such as this. First start with a word of an object-any object. It can be animate of inanimate. Got it? Ok, write it down. It doesn't matter what word it is, even if I'm going to use a different word because its that easy. I'm going to use the word Colt. Now that we have a word, think of as many things that can be associated with the word as possible. For example, my word Colt can be associated with horses, animals, ranches, pastures, hay, eating, riding, galloping, roaming, caring, lively, dependable, flighty, foreign, noisy, hides, horse-shoes, and the list could go on but you get the idea. Now after thinking of all those choices, its time to decide the manner of tongue-twister you want to go with. Typically a tongue-twister is either a statement or a question, such as "If Peter Piper picked..." being a question, and "The bottle breaking..." being a statement. I'll be making 3 tongue-twisters with my word 'Colt' below in a question-statement-statement method to illistrate the different ways you can create a complex twister out of the ideas from one word.

• If a colt cutter cut colts, how many colts could a colt cutter cut, if a colt cutter cut colts?
• Craily's colt cringed as up cold, clammy, callous Corjule climbed.
• Ten cuddling colts craved canned cranberries and cold cucumbers.

As you can see, there are many ways to go about making a tongue-twister just out of one word. Granted not all words are quite as easy to use as Colt, so be easy going on yourself and change the word you want to use if you're having a difficult time. Here are some more tongue-twisters to try out just for your amusement.

Misc. Tongue-Twisters

• The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick.
• Shep Schwab shopped at Scott's Schnapps shop; One shot of Scott's Schnapps stopped Schwab's watch.
• How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? He would chuck, he would, as much wood as he could, and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.