This week Jason Bermingham offers English Expert readers a new tongue-twister. Learn more about Jason’s work at www.vozemingles.com.
This week we continue our quest to say things that are so hard to say that everything else we say sounds easy. What did I just say? I said we get to learn another tongue-twister!
This is a famous tongue-twister that I first heard when I was about three years old. It’s short, so you can practice it over and over again until it rolls off your tongue easily, impressing all those who are within listening distance.
It’s called the woodchuck tongue-twister and if you had to translate it to Portuguese, it would be something like, Quanta madeira um picapau iria picar se um picapau pudesse picar madeira. Something like that. Except that a woodchuck isn’t a picapau, but instead a kind of marmot. You can search for “woodchuck” on Google images and see for yourself.
Anyway, here’s how the tongue-twister goes. Click on the audio link below and repeat after me.
How much wood…
(repeat)
would a woodchuck chuck…
(repeat)
if a woodchuck…
(repeat)
could chuck wood?
(repeat)
Not too hard, right?
So let’s try it again.
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?
(repeat)
If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
(repeat)
Good! Now a bit faster, without stopping.
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?
If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
(repeat)
That sounded nice. But can you keep up with a native speaker at full speed. Repeat after me.
How much wood, would a woodchuck chuck?
If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
(repeat)
OK. I admit it, I might have had a little help from the software!
Next week we’ll learn one more tongue-twister. And before the end of the year, we will study a tongue twister that claims to use every sound you can make in the English language.
I’m Jason Bermingham on English Experts. Keep practicing!
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