Saturday, September 29, 2007

Who Doesn't Love Tongue Twisters?

Especially Russian tongue twisters! Yes, I know, tongue twisters are hard enough in English! But here's my little back story: Back in high school, my Russian teacher had given them to the class in an effort to help us "warm up" to the language. He would randomly choose a student to read one aloud to the entire class and then we all had to read it together. If we got it wrong (which we all did) he made us read it again even faster. Let's just say it didn't exactly work out how he'd hoped. I made myself feel better by laughing at my failure (and of course, at my classmates as well =P). But hey, they're always fun to try even though some of them are REALLY hard! (Plus, the translations don't always make sense, so you can laugh at those too)I only put a few on here because I'm lazy, but there are so many more it's not even funny.

On side note, I couldn't find them with accent marks, so the accented letter is in bold.

Шла Саша по шоссе и сосала сушку
Sasha walked down the highway and sucked on a dry (ring-shaped) cracker.

"Расскажите про покупки!"
"Про какие про покупки?"
"Про покупки, про покупки,
про покупочки свои!"

Tell me about your purchases! What purchases? About purchases, purchases, your little purchases!

Карл у Клары укpал кораллы, а Клара у Карла украла кларнет.

Karl stole corals from Klara, and Klara stole a clarinet from Karl.

Повар Пётр и повар Павел,
Пётр пёк, а Павел парил,
Парил Павел, Пётр пёк,
Повар Пётр и повар Павел.

Peter is a cook and Paul is a cook. Peter baked, and Paul cooked on steam. Paul cooked on steam and Peter baked. Peter is a cook and Paul is a cook.

Во лесу лозу вяжу.
На возу лозу везу.
Коза, лозу не лижи - Накажу!

In the woods I tie the vines. On the cart I bring the vines. Goat, do not lick the vines. I'll punish you!

And just to step away from Russian, here are two in English:
The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick

Betty Botter bought a bit of butter.
The butter Betty Botter bought was a bit bitter
And made her batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter
Would make her batter better.
So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter,
Which made Betty Botter's bitter batter better


Here ya go: http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/ru.htm#O64

1 comment:

Dr. Michael A. Denner said...

These are great -- classics. We'll have to get someone here to record themselves reading these. They're not so hard... but the покупки one gets me every time.