Tongue Twister

“Excited executioner exercising his excellent excising powers excessively.”

Whenever I would visit my Grandparents’ house, I would make sure to spend time with my Grandpa because he always had something interesting to tell me. Sometimes it would be a funny joke, a tough riddle, or my favorite: tongue twisters. Although I only knew my Grandpa for a short time, he died in 1996; I talk about him with my Mom from time to time because she of course remembers his knowledge of interesting verbal lore. We agree that of all his tongue twisters, the one above is probably the hardest to say. This is probably because it uses an unusual letter in the alphabet, the letter “X,” which is rarely spoken in colloquial language and therefore somewhat foreign to the mouth, especially is such a continuous string. Even when said slowly, the mouth stumbles over the “X” and “S” sounds, which are so similar that it only makes the sentence even more difficult to pronounce.

Tongue twisters do not really appeal to me anymore though, but as a kid, I loved the challenge of trying to ramble off a complex tongue as fast as possible. I believe tongue twisters mostly appeal to young kids because they turn them into games, chants, or even playground mantras.