If you are into languages, you are probably familiar with those conversations with your multilingual friends: you take arbitrary elements from the languages you both speak, and randomly squeeze them together into sentences. That is any regular Monday for the Swiss. Schwyzdüütsch, a.k.a. Swiss German is a colorful amalgamation of German, French and Italian.
This week, French gets its turn with an illustrated collection of tongue twisters or virelangues.
Tongue twisters are somewhat humorous phrases that rely on alliteration 1, rapid alternation between similar but distinct phonemes 2, and other phonetic devices that make them fairly difficult to articulate, even for native speakers.
Due to their phonetic complexity, tongue twisters are a fun way to train your ear and pronunciation in foreign languages. They can help you differentiate minimal pairs, train muscle placement and develop clearer speech patterns.
Thanks to my friend François, you can listen to the pronunciation of each virelangue. Just click on the audio track below each illustration. Allons-y!
C’est fini! Do you have a favorite virelangue, or maybe one that is impossible to pronounce? Do you know more tongue twisters? Leave me a comment!
You try to keep your languages in good shape, and the more you practice the more they wrestle for space… The eternal question: what to do in order to keep your languages skills without forgetting the others?
Click here to see The Brain on Multilingualism, Part I.
