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Voice Performance: Exercises

It's Hard to Say

A good way to improve one's delivery of normal phrases is to practice on difficult ones. Such practice can be valuable when real-life tongue-twisters occur in the middle of "normal" scripts, while the clock is running and the producer waits impatiently for the announcer to complete Take 43. So here is a collection of exercises to help anybody interested in public speaking of any kind.

PART ONE: Examples from actual scripts or publications. The writers will not be named unless they request it, and companies and products will not be identified. This rules out a lot of goodies (I had to eliminate several from my own collection)! NOTE: the test is not whether a phrase has long, complex words -- a mental challenge -- but simply whether its phonetic structure makes it really hard to say.

PART TWO: Diction exercises that are intended to be hard to pronounce. These "tongue-twisters" are, for the non-professional, just fun (or frustrating!) to read. However, I've tried to categorize them by the specific vocal elements that each exercise targets, for use by professionals.

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Part one: Unintentional Tongue-twisters

from corporate media, ads, and elsewhere

• A twenty-two point two cubic foot frost free refrigerator-freezer.
• X-dot-Desktop. (The pronunciation of X.Desktop, a real-life Unix-based software product from SCO.)
• A central ice crystal's six similar sides determine a snowflake's six-way similarity.
• Withdraw five milliliters from the top of the platelet-poor plasma.
• A lower-cost alternative to traditional plans.
• A one half-inch insulin syringe.
• [Brand X gum gives you] that just brushed freshness.

Part two: Intentional Tongue-twisters

Exercises for Consonants

• High roller, low roller, lower roller.
• I need a box of biscuits, a box of mixed biscuits, and a biscuit mixer.
• 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?
• He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
• The jolly collie swallowed a lollipop.
• Friday's Five Fresh Fish Specials.
• Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.
• The Leith police dismisseth us.
• Twixt this and six thick thistle sticks.
• Red leather, yellow leather.
• She sells sea shells by the seashore,
  and the shells she sells are sea shells.
• The sixth Sikh Sheik's sixth sheep's sick. (Technically, "sheik" should be pronounced like the English word "shake" -- but that would throw off the rhyme with "sheep." Try it both ways!)
• Three free thugs set three thugs free.
• Charles deftly switched straight flange strips.
• Gwen glowered and grimaced at Glen's gleaming greens.

Exercises for Vowels

• Fancy! That fascinating character Harry McCann married Anne Hammond. (This may look easy, but if you are not pronouncing all the "short a" sounds identically, you have work to do.)
• Lot lost his hot chocolate at the loft.
• Snoring Norris was marring the aria.

Exercises for Everything

• Eleven benevolent elephants.
• Girl gargoyle, guy gargoyle.
• Rubber baby buggy bumpers.
• She stood on the balcony inexplicably mimicking him hiccupping and amicably welcoming him in.
• Six sick slick slim sycamore saplings.

Repeaters

I've set these aside a special class of tongue twister -- the kind that becomes more challenging the more you say it. So if you don't find each one "hard to say" at first, just keep repeating it until you do!

• Unique New York.
• Toy boat.
• Lemon liniment.
• Three free throws.
• Blue black bugs blood.
• Red lorry, yellow lorry.
• Giggle gaggle gurgle.

Heard a good one lately? This page has plenty of space for your input! Check the guidelines above, then press the "Comments?" button to make any suggestions. Any contributions used here will be duly noted on the Credits Page! (Meanwhile, please respect the creative input of all contributors -- and the webmaster -- and do not reproduce this page without permission. Thanks! (c) 1996-2004 Rich Wilson. All rights reserved.