twist your tongue

viewtru’s blog on tongue twisters prompted me to blog on the same.

i remember long long ago when i was in school, i used to enjoy tongue twisters. the 2 most popular (to me at that time) tongue twisters that i like, and can remember it by heart are the ones about sea shells and woodchuck 

1.  she sells sea shells on the sea shore.
     the shells that she sells are sea shells i’m sure.
     so if she sells sea shells on the sea shore,
     i’m sure that the shells are sea shore shells. 

2   how much wood would a woodchuck chuck
     if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
     if a woodchuck could chuck wood
     the wood that the woodchuck would chuck
     is the wood that the woodchuck could chuck wood.
 
it is said that the most difficult tongue twister is this:

the sixth’s sheikh’s sixth’s sheep’s sick.

try saying it over and over again, faster and faster and you’ll be lost. 🙂

i googled for tongue twister and found a nice site with tongue twisters in lots of different languages.  for chinese. i see there are mandarin and cantonese but no hokkien. no fear, a penang hokkien lang is here. (actually i’m not hokkien but almost all chinese penangtite knows and is very good at hokkien). this is one tongue twisters i learned as a child in hokkien. er… can’t really say tongue twisters since they are all the same words… only you have to say it in different intonation, then only you get the meaning.

kong kong kong kong kong kong kong kong.
 
ok translation…
kong kong = grandfather
kong = says
kong kong = tin
kong = hit
kong kong = grandfather

so put it all together, it is:
grandfather says tin hit grandfather.

got it? for those who understand hokkien i mean.

if you understand, say “”understand””. if you don’t understand, say “”don’t understand””. but if you understand and say “”don’t understand””.how do i understand that you understand. understand!? 😛