8 Famous Tongue Twisters

Tongue twisters have been screwing up speaking abilities around the world for centuries. As entertaining as tripping over tricky terms can be, early English twisters were also used to teach pupils proper speech. In a note to teachers in his 1878 book Practical Elocution, J.W. Shoemaker reminded them of the “higher motive” of these confounding sayings: “To The Teacher—While many of the exercises … may create amusement in a class, a higher motive than ‘Amusement’ has prompted their insertion. P...