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Monday is International Tongue Twister Day and if you're looking for a mouthful, you could celebrate by talking about a sheikh who isn't feeling well. He's sixth in line and has some livestock, it seems, and one of his sheep is also under the weather. To explain all this you could say:

 as the most difficult tongue twister in the English language in 1974, the last year the organization tracked tongue twisters.

It's still pretty hard to say today, but you can try a hack recommended by Eliza Simpson, a dialect coach in New York.

"I look at the tongue twister and I think of an image for each word," Simpson told NPR's Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. "And then as I'm going through the tongue twister, it's like, I'm in my mind literally swiping through flashcards of images. I go from image to image to image. And I find this is the way to get my muscles to do what my brain is asking."

Simpson says tongue twisters are challenging and beneficial for brains.

"Tongue twisters are important because they combine two things that help humans learn. They combine repetition and they can find an element of surprise and fun."

One particularly old and well-known tongue twister dates back to at least 1836, if not earlier. 

 in Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation.

Take a try at 10 of our favorite tongue twisters:

 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be particularly tough to say 10 times fast.

Another way to mark the day: Watch “Ammonite,” the 2020 movie about Mary Anning, a self-taught paleontologist who was known for her historic fossil discoveries and 

the possible inspiration for the tongue-twister

: "She sells seashells by the seashore." 

Jessica Green and Leone Lakhani produced and edited the audio segment.

L. Carol Ritchie

Author

Tien Le

We challenge you to say what the Guinness World Records once called the most difficult English-language tongue twister: "The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick." 

On International Tongue Twister Day, test out these tried, true and tricky ones

Go Deeper.

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