English Tongue Twisters
90 English tongue twisters sorted by the sound they train and by difficulty, plus a trainer: pick a sound, listen to a natural voice, say the twister, and the page tells you which words it heard, whether the run was clean and how many words per second you managed. Free, in your browser, no sign-up; the recorder needs Chrome, Edge or Safari.
Three free throws.
th · Warm-up · 1 of 90 in this set
Now you say it
A clean run means at least 90% of the words were heard in order (our threshold). Recording uses your browser’s speech recognition, which sends the audio to the browser vendor’s speech service; nothing is stored by this page.
How to use the tongue twister trainer
- Pick the sound you struggle with — th, s/sh, r/l, w/v, p/b/t, f/v, ch/sh/j, i/ee or a/e — and start at Warm-up. "All sounds" walks the whole list.
- Listen twice: once at normal speed, once slow. Notice where the mouth changes shape, not just the words.
- Say it slowly and cleanly three times before you try it fast. A twister mumbled at speed trains mumbling.
- Record and read the result: which words were heard, whether the run was clean, and your words per second. Clean at a careful pace → repeat faster. Clean and fast → next twister or the next difficulty. Not clean → slow audio again, then record.
How the scoring works
The page plays each twister in a natural voice and records you with your browser’s built-in speech recognition (Chrome, Edge and Safari have it; Firefox does not). The transcript is compared with the twister word by word, in order: a word counts as heard when it appears after the previously matched word. Clean run means at least 90% of the words were heard in order — our threshold, chosen so one dropped word in a ten-word twister still passes and two do not. Words per second is the number of words in the transcript divided by the length of the recording, so saying a twister three times fast counts as speaking three times as much; it is not computed when the recording is shorter than a second. For orientation, conversational English runs at about 120–150 words per minute, roughly 2–2.5 words per second (VirtualSpeech, average speaking rate); we call under 2 words/s careful, 2–3 conversational and above 3 fast. Those bands are ours.
Difficulty is editorial: Warm-up is short and drills one sound, Standard is the classic length, Hard alternates two or more sounds or stacks consonant clusters. Origins are stated only where a source was checked; the rest are traditional with no reliable date, or were written for this page to cover sounds the classics skip (the i/ee and a/e vowels, f/v, w/v).
The sounds the twisters drill
| Group | IPA | What the mouth does | Twisters |
|---|---|---|---|
| th | /θ/ /ð/ | Tongue tip touches the back of the top teeth; air passes over it (think, this). | 8 |
| s / sh | /s/ /ʃ/ | For s the tongue is close to the teeth and the lips are flat; for sh it moves back and the lips round. | 9 |
| r / l | /r/ /l/ | For l the tongue tip touches the ridge behind the teeth; for r it pulls back and touches nothing. | 11 |
| w / v | /w/ /v/ | w is lips only, rounded and not touching; v is the bottom lip against the top teeth with voice. | 9 |
| p / b / t | /p/ /b/ /t/ | Short closed-lip stops; p needs a puff of air, b needs voice, t is the tongue tip on the ridge. | 12 |
| f / v | /f/ /v/ | Same mouth position; f is air only, v adds voice. Do not let v become a w. | 7 |
| ch / sh / j | /tʃ/ /ʃ/ /dʒ/ | ch starts with a t-stop and releases into sh; j is the voiced twin; sh has no stop at all. | 8 |
| i / ee | /ɪ/ /iː/ | ship is short and relaxed; sheep is long with the tongue high and the lips spread. | 8 |
| a / e | /æ/ /ɛ/ | bad opens the jaw wider than bed; the tongue sits lower and further forward. | 8 |
| Mixed classics | several | Alternating sounds and clusters; the famous ones and the certified hardest. | 10 |
All 90 English tongue twisters
The full list behind the trainer, with the sound each one drills and its difficulty. 8 have a documented origin; origins checked 21.10.2026 against the sources named in the Origin column.
| Tongue twister | Sound | Difficulty | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three free throws. | th | Warm-up | — |
| Think things through thoroughly. | th | Warm-up | — |
| Thin sticks, thick bricks. | th | Warm-up | — |
| Thank the thoughtful author for the other three thrillers. | th | Standard | — |
| They gathered the feathers together on Thursday with their father. | th | Standard | — |
| The thin thief thought thrice, then thanked the three brothers. | th | Standard | — |
| These three thieves think they thrive on thin threads. | th | Hard | — |
| Thirty-three thirsty, thundering thoroughbreds thumped Mr. Thurber on Thursday. | th | Hard | — |
| She sells seashells by the seashore. | s / sh | Standard | Music-hall song by Terry Sullivan and Harry Gifford, 1908; the line was an elocution exercise decades earlier. |
| Sheila shares shiny shells with Sasha. | s / sh | Warm-up | — |
| Sam sells short spotted socks in his shop. | s / sh | Warm-up | — |
| Shy Shelly says she shall sew sheets. | s / sh | Standard | — |
| I saw Susie sitting in a shoeshine shop. | s / sh | Standard | — |
| Several slippery snails slid slowly seaward. | s / sh | Standard | — |
| The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick. | s / sh | Hard | Listed by Guinness World Records as the hardest English tongue twister in 1974, the last year it tracked them. |
| Irish wristwatch, Swiss wristwatch. | s / sh | Hard | — |
| Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches? | s / sh | Hard | — |
| Little Lily likes lovely little lilies. | r / l | Warm-up | — |
| Rolling red wagons roll really well. | r / l | Warm-up | — |
| Lovely lemon liniment. | r / l | Warm-up | — |
| Red lorry, yellow lorry. | r / l | Standard | — |
| Red leather, yellow leather. | r / l | Standard | — |
| Truly rural, truly rural, truly rural. | r / l | Standard | — |
| Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran. | r / l | Standard | — |
| The great Greek grape growers grow great Greek grapes. | r / l | Standard | — |
| Lorries loaded with lemons rolled along the long lane. | r / l | Standard | — |
| Rory the warrior and Roger the worrier were reared wrongly in a rural brewery. | r / l | Hard | — |
| Really leery, rarely Larry. | r / l | Hard | — |
| Which witch is which? | w / v | Warm-up | — |
| Very well, very well, very well. | w / v | Warm-up | — |
| Wayne went to Wales to watch walruses. | w / v | Warm-up | — |
| We will visit the village in the wide valley with Victor. | w / v | Warm-up | — |
| How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? | w / v | Standard | From the 1902 song by Robert Hobart Davis for the musical The Runaways; Theodore Morse’s 1904 version made it famous. |
| Vincent vowed vengeance very vehemently. | w / v | Standard | — |
| Vera waved while Walter vowed to wait. | w / v | Standard | — |
| The velvet vest Wendy wore was very wet. | w / v | Standard | — |
| Whether the weather is cold or whether the weather is hot, we'll weather the weather, whatever the weather. | w / v | Standard | — |
| A big black bug bit a big black bear. | p / b / t | Warm-up | — |
| Busy buzzing bumblebees. | p / b / t | Warm-up | — |
| Good blood, bad blood. | p / b / t | Warm-up | — |
| Bake big batches of buttery bread before breakfast. | p / b / t | Warm-up | — |
| Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. | p / b / t | Standard | First printed in John Harris’s Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation, London, 1813. |
| Betty Botter bought some butter, but she said the butter's bitter. | p / b / t | Standard | Carolyn Wells, The Jingle Book, 1899. |
| Rubber baby buggy bumpers. | p / b / t | Standard | — |
| Black background, brown background. | p / b / t | Standard | — |
| A proper copper coffee pot. | p / b / t | Standard | — |
| Give papa a cup of proper coffee in a copper coffee cup. | p / b / t | Standard | — |
| Paul bought a bright blue bucket of plump purple plums. | p / b / t | Standard | — |
| Ted tipped the tiny tin top to Tim. | p / b / t | Standard | — |
| Freshly fried flying fish. | f / v | Warm-up | — |
| Vivid violet vans visit the valley. | f / v | Warm-up | — |
| Fifi feeds the fat fish fresh figs every Friday. | f / v | Warm-up | — |
| Fresh fried fish, fish fresh fried, fried fish fresh, fish fried fresh. | f / v | Standard | — |
| Vivian believes violent, violet bugs have very big value. | f / v | Standard | — |
| Fluffy finches fly far from the frosty fir. | f / v | Standard | — |
| Frantic frogs fled from fierce fishes near the ferry. | f / v | Standard | — |
| Cheap ship trip. | ch / sh / j | Warm-up | — |
| Josh and Sasha share a jar of cherry jam. | ch / sh / j | Warm-up | — |
| Chester cheetah chews a chunk of cheap cheddar cheese. | ch / sh / j | Standard | — |
| Chip shop chips, cheap chip shop chips. | ch / sh / j | Standard | — |
| Charles chose cheap chocolate chips for the children. | ch / sh / j | Standard | — |
| Judge Jenkins juggled jars of jam in the chilly church. | ch / sh / j | Standard | — |
| Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie. | ch / sh / j | Hard | — |
| Jolly juggling jesters jauntily juggled jingling jacks. | ch / sh / j | Hard | — |
| I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. | i / ee | Warm-up | Chorus of the 1927 song by Howard Johnson, Billy Moll and Robert A. King. |
| Ship, sheep; chip, cheap; bit, beat; sit, seat. | i / ee | Warm-up | — |
| Tim and his team met Jim at the gym. | i / ee | Warm-up | — |
| Sheena leads, Sheila needs. | i / ee | Standard | — |
| The big bug bit the little beetle, but the little beetle bit the big bug back. | i / ee | Standard | — |
| Pete peeked at the pit, then Pip peeped at the peat. | i / ee | Standard | — |
| Fill the field, feel the fill, still the steel. | i / ee | Standard | — |
| Lisa lives in Leeds; Liz leaves in a minute. | i / ee | Standard | — |
| Eddie edited it. | a / e | Warm-up | — |
| Fred fed Ted bread, and Ted fed Fred bread. | a / e | Warm-up | — |
| The best bet Betty had was a bad bet. | a / e | Warm-up | — |
| Can you can a can as a canner can can a can? | a / e | Standard | — |
| Pat let the black cat sit back on the flat mat. | a / e | Standard | — |
| Ben bent the pen, then sent the pen back to Ken. | a / e | Standard | — |
| Ann and Andy ate apples at the annual match. | a / e | Standard | — |
| Merry Mary married Harry in a hurry. | a / e | Hard | — |
| Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat. | Mixed classics | Warm-up | — |
| Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he? | Mixed classics | Standard | — |
| Unique New York, unique New York. | Mixed classics | Standard | — |
| A good cook could cook as many cookies as a good cook who could cook cookies. | Mixed classics | Standard | — |
| Any noise annoys an oyster, but a noisy noise annoys an oyster more. | Mixed classics | Standard | — |
| How can a clam cram in a clean cream can? | Mixed classics | Standard | — |
| Scissors sizzle, thistles sizzle. | Mixed classics | Standard | — |
| Near an ear, a nearer ear, a nearly eerie ear. | Mixed classics | Hard | — |
| Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously. | Mixed classics | Hard | Sung in the film Singin’ in the Rain, 1952. |
| Pad kid poured curd pulled cod. | Mixed classics | Hard | Proposed as the hardest English tongue twister by MIT speech researchers at the Acoustical Society of America meeting, December 2013. |
Sources for the origins: Peter Piper (1813), She Sells Seashells (1908), Betty Botter (1899), the woodchuck song (1902/1904), the Guinness 1974 listing, the MIT twister (2013), I Scream, You Scream (1927), Singin’ in the Rain (1952).
What to do with your result
Clean run at a careful pace. The articulation is there; speed is the missing half. Repeat the same twister and try to add half a word per second each time, then move up one difficulty. Three clean runs at conversational pace on a Hard twister is a good place to stop for that sound.
Not clean, and the same word keeps dropping. That is rarely a speed problem. Play the slow version, say the dropped word on its own, then inside the twister. If it still fails after a few rounds, the sound itself needs work before the twister does: the minimal pairs drill fixes one contrast at a time.
The words come out, but you doubt the sound. A word matcher is generous: a sh said as s often still resolves to the right word. For per-sound feedback on sentences of your own, the tutor in the Fluently app scores pronunciation during a conversation.
In the Fluently app, pronunciation drills score English sounds one by one and the tutor corrects you during the conversation, so a sound you fixed here gets checked in real speech. Installing the app and the spoken English assessment are free; regular practice is part of a subscription.
Limits: what this trainer does not tell you
- It checks words, not sounds. Speech recognition guesses the most likely word, so a slightly wrong consonant can still score as heard. Use it to catch dropped or swapped words and to build speed; for the sound itself, use a per-sound tool.
- Numbers and possessives can score low. The recognizer writes sixth as 6th and thirty-three as 33, and sometimes drops the apostrophe in sheik’s. Those words show as missed even when you said them.
- Speed is approximate. The recording includes the pause before recognition stopped (about a second), so the words-per-second figure reads a little low on short twisters. Compare your own attempts, not yourself against a speaker.
- No speech recognition in Firefox and in some in-app browsers. The list and the audio still work; record yourself with a voice-memo app instead.
- It is not an accent or fluency test. Tongue twisters build articulation speed on sounds you can already make; they do nothing for a contrast you cannot yet hear.
Frequently asked questions
What is the hardest tongue twister in English?
Two have a claim. "The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick" was listed by Guinness World Records as the hardest English tongue twister in 1974, the last year it tracked them. "Pad kid poured curd pulled cod" was proposed as harder by MIT speech researchers in December 2013; in their tests some speakers stopped halfway. Both are in the Hard set above.
Do tongue twisters actually improve pronunciation?
They improve articulation speed and control on sounds you can already produce, which is why actors and presenters warm up with them. They do not teach a new contrast: if you cannot hear the difference between ship and sheep, repeating "she sells seashells" fast will not create it. Fix the contrast with minimal pairs first, then use twisters to make it survive at speed.
How should I practice a tongue twister?
Slow and clean first, fast later. Listen to a model, say it three times slowly with every consonant in place, then speed up only while it stays clean. Record yourself: the recorder catches the dropped word your ear skips. Two minutes a day on one sound beats ten minutes on random twisters.
What is the oldest English tongue twister?
Among the famous ones, "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" has the earliest print date: John Harris’s Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation, London, 1813. "She sells seashells" was an elocution exercise in the 19th century before it became a 1908 music-hall song, and "Betty Botter" appeared in Carolyn Wells’s Jingle Book in 1899.
Why are tongue twisters so hard to say?
Because they alternate sounds made in almost the same place in the mouth: s and sh, p and b, r and l. The brain plans speech several sounds ahead, and near-identical neighbors get swapped or merged when the plan runs faster than the tongue. That is also why the MIT researchers used them to study how speech is planned.
Which tongue twisters are good for the th sound?
Start with "Three free throws" and "Think things through thoroughly", which keep the tongue tip on the teeth without alternating. Then "They gathered the feathers together on Thursday with their father" for the voiced th, and "These three thieves think they thrive on thin threads" to mix both. Filter the trainer by "th" to work through all eight.
Can I use the trainer without a microphone?
Yes. The list, the difficulty filter and the audio at normal and slow speed work everywhere, including Firefox and browsers without speech recognition. Only the Record step needs a microphone and Chrome, Edge or Safari; without it, record yourself with any voice-memo app and compare with the audio.
