Raising Bilingual Niños: Tip #4

“Trabalenguas”, (Tongue twisters), are fun and they help one practice pronunciation. Here are a few you can try yourself, or with the niños.

Erre con erre cigarro,
Erre con erre barril.
Rapido corren los carros,
Cargados de azúcar al ferrocarril.

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Dime cuantos cuentos cuentas cuando cuentas cuentos.

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Pedro Pablo Pérez Pinto Prieto,
Pinta puertas por poco precio,
Para poder pasar por Perú
Por el Partido Popular.

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Cómo quieres que te quiera si al que quiero no me quiere como quiero que me quiera.

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Pepe Pecas pica papas con un pico.
Con un pico pica papas Pepe Pecas.

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Tres tristes tigres tragan trigo en un trigal.

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Pablito clavó un clavito.
¿Qué clavito clavó Pablito?

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In the video below I tried my 3 favorite tongue twisters. Native Spanish speakers, feel free to let me know how I did. My husband isn’t very objective when it comes to helping me with pronunciation. Sometimes he’ll tell me something sounds great and later I find out it wasn’t pronounced correctly. When I ask my husband why he didn’t tell me, he just shrugs and says, “But you sound cute!” … So I guess as much as I love his English mistakes, he must like my Spanish mistakes, too.

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Want all your Spanish sounds in just one sentence? Well, just like English has “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” to include every letter in the alphabet for handwriting practice, Spanish has the following sentence:

La cigüeña gigante bebió ocho copas de whisky, más quince jarras llenas de fría cerveza rubia, y enseguida huyó en un taxi.

Translation:

The giant stork drank eight glasses of whiskey, plus fifteen full mugs of cold pale ale, and escaped in a taxi right away.

It’s a little weird, verdad? … Anyway, the website, SpanishLearningHacks.com has more information on this particular sentence, and other great tips, so I highly recommend a visit to their site as well.

Links:

Spanish tongue twisters at WikiQuote

Spanish tongue twisters at AlphaDictionary.com