Accent Expert Breaks Down Tongue Twisters in Different Accents | WIRED

she sells seashells by the seashore red leather yellow leather unique new york she stood upon the balcony i am a mother pheasant plucker i pluck mother pheasants i am the most pleasant mother pheasant plucker that ever plucked a mother pheasant okay so we all know that tongue twisters are really fun and that they're fun because they're hard and they make you mess up a boxy biscuit biscuit book truly really proper cough copper coffee butt but why are they hard today i'm going to walk you through why some tongue twisters are more difficult than others so one of the things that we forget sometimes is that speech sounds are physical actions let's look at an ultrasound image of how many cans can a canner can of counter can cans how many cans can a canner can if a can or can can cans so here's a diagram of the inside of your vocal tract this is called a mid-sagittal section and it's going to let us show really clearly what some of these actions are if we want to make a speech sound like a p like a pa right we're going to close the lips here the air is coming up through the vocal tract and it gets stopped and then air pressure builds up until it explodes out in a pa you can feel that if you try it yourself try this a box of biscuits a box of mixed biscuits and a biscuit mixer try that three times fast a box of biscuits a box of mixed biscuits and a biscuit mixer a box of biscuits a box of mixed biscuits and biscuit mixer a box of beasts a box of missed biscuits and a biscuit mixer a box of biscuits a box of mixed biscuits and a big skit mis mixer box a biscuit a box of mixed biscuits and a biscuit mixer we've got these same two consonant sounds but we keep swapping the order right make a sound here what's happening is that you're bringing the back of your tongue up to seal off the oral cavity right there at the roof of your mouth so just like with right the air is getting stopped some pressure is building up and then we're releasing it forward if i were to make a s sound like a long s sound i'm going to bring part of my tongue usually for most of us anyway it's going to be your tongue tip i'm going to bring my tongue tip up towards this gum ridge here then the air is going to have to fight to get past this narrow little obstruction that i've made here and the sound is coming from the turbulence of the air trying to get past that obstruction now say the english word box so the back of your tongue has to be up here for the and then it has to come down and the front part of the tongue has to come up real quick as to flip up for this box has to happen really fast but so far so good we do that all the time no problem box on its own no problem box box box biscuit on its own no problem biscuit biscuit biscuit we can do that all day long a box of biscuits a box of mixed biscuits and a biscuit mixer we keep swapping the order that's what makes it hard a box biscuits a box of mixed biscuits and a biscuit biscuit mixer a box of biscuits a box come miss fixes and a big biscuit mixer a box of beasts biscuit book a box of biscuits a box of biscuits a box of mixed biscuits biscuit mixer so there's been some cool research into tongue twisters where they put people in brain imaging machines and had them do tongue twisters to try to study the way planning works in speech and one of the things that they've been able to confirm is that speech sounds are organized in the brain according to the physical actions and where they take place in the vocal tract so there are tongue twisters that tend to make us mess up in similar consonant sounds and tongue twisters that tend to make us mess up vowel sounds let's talk about the immortal tongue twister toy boat go ahead and try it first three times fast toy boat toy boat toy boat all right this one's easier toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat ten times fast toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boy to help explain this one i'm going to pull up a quadrilateral you may have seen me bring up the vowel space in a previous video it's basically a person facing to the left like this we're in a cross section the front of the mouth is over here back of the mouth is over here it's a map of the inside of your mouth and it lets us be really precise about the exact shape and position of the tongue inside the mouth for a given vowel sound so both of these vowel sounds in the words toy and boat in most accents of english they're diphthongs they start in one spot and they move to another so we can draw them on the vowel chart in my accent oy starts way back here oh and moves forwards and up e so the whole thing goes it's a big old journey o is a much smaller journey but it is kind of similar in that it also starts way in the back and then it's going to move up and forwards ooh obviously this comes in a million different flavors different accents let's just stick with mine for now [Music] you see how these are parallel they have a very similar movement pattern the lips however are starting from very rounded in [Music] and then going unrounded and they're doing the opposite of that in o in that vowel in both they're starting off not very rounded and they're moving into lip rounding so it's a coordination problem again you're moving your tongue in a really similar way from back to front and up a little for both of them but you're having to move your lips in opposition to that toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat so you very quickly get confused toy boat toy boat toy boy toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat toy i mentioned by the way that the o vowel sound what we call the goat vowel has a lot of different varieties in different accents of english if we were to take a kind of an estuary english accent for instance and i had a vowel sound something like oh boat that's going to look like this it's going to start back here a little lower and it moves more than mine did and it moves but it still moves up and forward it's still moving up and forward in that general direction and moving from less slip rounding to more lip rounding and same is true even more broadly true from further back to further front if i'm say doing a broad australian accent i toy boat here are some more people doing toy boat toy boat toy bike toy bike toy bike toy boat toy boy toy boat toy boat toy boat toy boat tour boy toy boat toy boat toy boat some time twisters are gonna be harder for native speakers of some accents than others let's take the fast thief flash fried thick fish the fast flash fight big fish the fast bee flash fried thick fish the fast the flash fried cake fish the flower fast thief flashed fried thick fish the festive fresh flash flag thick fish this has got f which is a labiodental sound lip and teeth and th sounds so the tongue tip coming to the back of the front teeth or maybe even in between the teeth like that thick the fast thief flash fried thick fish the fast the flash fried thick fish so if we're gonna alternate back and forth between them then we have to go the fast thief flash fried thick fish now if you're a speaker of an accent that fronts th sounds meaning instead of using your tongue tip in the teeth you use something more to the front of the vocal tract like your lip going to your teeth like this so a word like thief you'd be inclined to use thief thief that too is going to be a tricky coordination exercise the fast beef flash fried thick fish fast food flash fire thick fish the fast fee flash fried fish fish the fast fif flash fried fish thick next tongue twister truly rural purely plural well this is gonna be hard for just about anybody truly rural purely plural truly really truly rural purely plural truly moral purely truly rural purely plural but it's probably going to be harder for americans than it is for other non-north american speakers of english truly rural purely plural truly royal purely plural truly rural purely plural gosh that's hard to do one reason of course is that there's just an extra r in it if you're a non-rhodic speaker then purely it doesn't have an r sound in it at all truly rural purely plural if you're a rhodic speaker purely it's got one extra r that's one extra r to mess up on truly real clearly blurable the other reason though is that american molar r er is particularly weird i've talked about it before the weirdest thing is that the sides of the tongue are sort of coming up you can imagine kind of if i'm a tongue and i'm raising my shoulders the sides of those tongue will come up and they'll make contact with the upper teeth the molars and the bicuspids on either side you can have a really strong version of that where they come all the way up inside and even press out against the sides of the upper teeth here's an ultrasound of someone making an american molar r round and round the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran now this is exacerbated because americans also tend to use a lot of back of tongue bunching on l sound so that's the back of the tongue coming up and back like this but again kind of squishing back into itself maybe in a sort of a similar way to the way it's doing with r up in here truly rural purely purely plural so here's a silly sentence that i just wrote bossy tommy shaw often called on lots of tall honest law officers and constables to do all kinds of awful horrible profitless jobs bossy tommy shaw often called on lots of tall honest law officers and constables who do all kinds of awful horrible profitless jobs so that's not necessarily a tongue twister for me an american there are a few shades of different vowels in there but it's not necessarily going to trip me up but this is going to be a nightmare for a bread an australian a south african basically any non-north american who's trying to do an american accent because there are pattern shifts all over the place the patterns of the vowels are different bossy tommy shaw often called unless at all on his law offices often called on lots of tall honest law officers and constables to do all kind of awful horrible prophets jobs for me the vowel sounds in bossy bossy bossy and tommy tommy tommy tommy are close but they're not the same bossy tommy bossy tommy bossy tommy whereas if i'm saying our peace speaker bossy tommy they're both going to be about here bossy told me she was he told me bossy told me conversely the sounds in for me shaw and often are the same they're right about here shaw often shaw often i think whereas if i'm a brit then that might be sure and often they're different you're often sure of them sure often so that's really going to make your brain explode so i wrote this sentence as practice for coordinating difficult vowel sounds in an american accent for actors who aren't americans bossy tommy shaw often caught on lots of taller on this little off floor lore okay next tongue twister if you're an american try this in your best rp all i want is a proper cup of coffee made from a proper copper coffee pot tin coffee pots and iron coffee pots they're no use to me if i can't have a proper cup of coffee made from a proper copper coffee pot i'd rather have a cup of tea all i want is a proper cup of coffee made from a proper cough copper coffee pot tin coffee pot and iron coffee pods than are used to me if i can't have a proper cup of coffee made from a proper cup of coffee pot i'd rather have a cup of tea oh my god for me all uses a vowel sound up here and coffee uses pretty much that same vowel sound whereas proper and pot are going to use a vowel sound down here they're close but they're not the same we have a different pattern though in our p so all is going to be up here whereas coffee proper and pot are all going to be down here so it's pattern shifts that make that one really devilishly tricky but also really good practice oh proper proper proper coffee coffee coffee pot pot in 2013 some researchers at mit came up with what they claimed was the hardest tongue twister in the english language and this tongue twister was so hard that apparently none of the test subjects could even get through it the tongue twister is as follows pad kid poured curd pulled cod had kid poured curd pulp caught that kid poured curd pulled cod pad kid poured curb pulp cod pad kid poured curd pulled cod what does that mean pad kid poured perk so let's look at the first and last consonants of each word first each word ends in a d sound which is a tongue tip sound like this and they alternate they go back and forth they're beginning constants between for the lips and for the back of the tongue so we have a lip sound a tip of the tongue sound da and a back of the tongue sound and they're all stops they're all the same kind of obstruction of airflow if we say them all together but just the consonant sounds that begin in any word we get could put could put could for even pattern put could put could put could let's look at the vowel sounds now so these go ah [Music] or er [Music] we're kind of going all over the whole vowel space here they're all different we're not repeating any of them so maybe that's what's hard about it is that we're going back to the same pattern over and over and over again with the consonants could whereas we're varying each of the vowels and we never come back to the same one so the combination of similar and different could trip you up i guess try it for yourself see what you think pad kit board cut pulled cord pad kid poured curled curd pulled cod pad cake pulled cord porch card pack yield per cardboard kit packet port card pulled pog code i've said it before speech is one of the most physically complex things we do as human being and of course it's physically complex and it's complex in terms of brain planning and coordination so that's the intersection that makes tongue twisters so fascinating and difficult and fun next time you do some tongue twisters maybe just pay attention to what those physical actions are and if you want to try to pattern them you can pattern the physical actions after each other and get better and better at coordinating them

Channel: WIRED

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Keywords: accent expert, tongue twisters, tongue twister, accent expert wired, wired accent expert, accent expert erik singer, erik singer, erik singer accent expert, erik singer wired, erik singer tongue twisters, dialect coach, dialect coach explains, dialect coach reacts, tongue twisters explained, tongue twisters wired, tongue twister explanation, toy boat, toy boat tongue twister, erik singer wired accents, wired accents, erik singer tongue twister, wired tongue twisters, wired

Id: cJm0UbN7jbk

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 16 2020