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SUBJECT 21. PLAYFUL LINGUISTICS
A. Tongue Twisters
According to Wikipedia,
A
скороговорка is a phrase that is
designed to be difficult to
articulate properly, and can be used as a type of spoken (or sung) word game. I will give
you here some examples of Russian tongue-twisters and would ask you to train yourself
in their pronunciation by repeating each of them many times: at first slowly, but then
faster and faster - until you feel absolutely comfortable in pronouncing them. It is not only
useful, but also you should have a great fun while doing this.
The Russian equivalent for a word "tongue twister" is
"
скороговоркa" which consists of
2 meaningful parts:
"
скоро" (which means "fast") and "
говоркa" (which is
originated
from verb
"
говорить" = to speak. Thus,
"скороговоркa" is a phrase which designed
to speak fast, in spite of its specific difficulty to be articulated properly. Anyway, let's
start
with our examples:
(a)
Карл у Клары украл кораллы, а Клара у Карла украла кларнет (Carl
stole corals
from Clara and Clara stole clarinet from Carl.)
(b)
Чёрной галке чёрный дрозд подарил черники гроздь,
Чёрная галка чернику склевала, только спасибо дрозду не сказала.
(A
blackbird
gave a bunch of blueberries to a black jackdaw as a present.
The black jackdaw has pecked all blueberries, but did not say 'thank you' to the
blackbird).
