Finger Twisters/Silly Sentences

When I was a kid, my grandma would watch me during the day when my mom was at work. The two of us would read, do activities, play games etc. (Note to self:  Do not play Aggravation with young children. It may teach them to be a poor loser for the rest of their life.) One of my favorite books to read was my illustrated tongue twister book. We would laugh and laugh at each other's attempts at saying "rubber baby buggy bumpers," or "she sells seashells by the seashore." My inner court reporting student thanks you for that experience, Grandma.

I think the key to these is the similarities and differences between the words, which make the brain really work at interpreting what you heard or read. It's also excellent for practicing soundalikes and conflict differentiation. I'm incorporating this type of thing into today's steno practice session. Some are actual tongue twisters found on the web, and a few are mine, specially written for finger positions that give me trouble. Try writing these on your steno machine several times.

Click here for the audio file

Freshly fried flying fish.


How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,
and chuck as much as a woodchuck would
if a woodchuck could chuck wood.


The epitome of femininity.


Pop the cork. I'm home from work.


Should the child or could the child shine their thick leather shoes?


A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk, but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.


Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?


Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.


Many an anemone sees an enemy anemone.(I use TPHAOEPL for enemy.)


They could choose to share their chocolate cashews.

Want more tongue twister fun? Go here for an A-to-Z list or go here and follow the links for longer tongue twister poems.

Hah! They have rude/dirty tongue twisters here. Not offensive by themselves, but if you get going too fast out might pop a cuss word. A good way to check if your swears are well enough "hidden in your CAT dictionary" to not come out in realtime translation!

On a personal note, (like the above childhood memories weren't enough, haha) I passed my second 200 wpm Q&A on the last testing opportunity of the season. I'm excited, to say the least. It also means that I reached goal #4 of the short-term goals I set back in August, which you can read here. So on that note, why don't you all set a short term steno goal to reach by the end of break and some for the upcoming semester. Your future inner court reporter thanks you too. :)