Unlocking Chinese: Fun Tongue Twisters for Enhanced Pronunciation

Here are some popular Chinese tongue twisters used for pronunciation practice:

• 四是四，十是十，十四是十四，四十是四十 (Sì shì sì, shí shì shí, shísì shì shísì, sìshí shì sìshí) Translation: Four is four, ten is ten, fourteen is fourteen, forty is forty. This tongue twister helps practice the distinction between the “s” and “sh” sounds.

• 吃葡萄不吐葡萄皮，不吃葡萄倒吐葡萄皮 (Chī pútao bù tǔ pútao pí, bù chī pútao dào tǔ pútao pí) Translation: Eat grapes without spitting out the skin, don’t eat grapes but spit out the skin. This helps with articulation of “p” and “t” sounds.

• 八百标兵奔北坡，炮兵并排北边跑 (Bābǎi biāobīng bēn běi pō, pàobīng bìngpái běibiān pǎo) Translation: Eight hundred soldiers rush to the north slope, artillerymen run side by side on the north side. This is good for practicing “b” and “p” consonants.

• 牛郎恋刘娘，刘娘念牛郎 (Niúláng liàn Liúniáng, Liúniáng niàn Niúláng) Translation: The cowherd loves Miss Liu; Miss Liu thinks of the cowherd. This practices “n” and “l” sounds.

These tongue twisters focus on commonly confused consonants and tones in Mandarin and are widely used in pronunciation training to improve clarity and fluency. Would a list with more examples or explanations of their phonetic focus be helpful?

References

• Think Before You Speak——The Construction of English Language Thinking With the Help of Tongue Twisters In College English Class Teaching

• Phonetic articulation of Russian noise consonants produced by Chinese-speaking students

• WAYS OF TRAINING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION THROUGH TONGUE TWISTERS: EXPERIENCE OF POLTAVA UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND TRADE

• Tongue Twister Method in Teaching Pronunciation: A Narrative Inquiry of Pre-Service English Teacher

• English Pronunciation Practices: From Tongue Twisters to YouTube Channel

• TWISTING TONGUES: ENHANCING GRADE 9 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION THROUGH PHONETIC TONGUE TWISTERS INCORPORATING ELSA SPEAK

• Evaluating Effectiveness of Articulation Practice with Tongue-twister Movement Distance Using Ultrasound.

• [THE ROLE OF TONGUE TWISTERS IN THE PROCESS OF TEACHING PHONETICS][8]

• TONGUE-TWISTER AS A METHOD OF STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION TRAINING AT HANOI UNIVERSITY (INITIAL STAGE OF TRAINING)

• English pronounciation teaching practices to EFL learners: working with the tongue twisters at The Eminence Course Pare Kediri Indonesia

• Improving TTS for Shanghainese: Addressing Tone Sandhi via Word Segmentation

• Correcting Chinese Spelling Errors with Phonetic Pre-training

• TwistList: Resources and Baselines for Tongue Twister Generation

• Liuzijue Qigong: A Voice Training Method For Unilateral Vocal Fold Paralysis Patients

• THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TONGUE TWISTERS TO IMPROVE THE STUDENTS’ ABILITY TO PRONOUNCE FRICATIVE CONSONANTS AND LONG VOWELS

• PANCETTA: Phoneme Aware Neural Completion to Elicit Tongue Twisters Automatically

• Using Toongue Twister Technique to Improve Students’ Pronunciation Ability

• THE USE OF TONGUE TWISTER TECHNIQUE TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION

• Pitch-Aware RNN-T for Mandarin Chinese Mispronunciation Detection and Diagnosis

• Improving English Pronunciation Teaching and Learning via Speech Corpora of Learners with Dialectal Backgrounds

[8]: https://www.ocerints.org/adved22_e-publication/abstracts/aThea Shavladze.html