Which Tongue Twisters Should Voice Actors Use? 25 to Warm Up With

All 25 are below, sorted by the sound each one trains.

A short video I made on why tongue twisters matter more than people think:

Every voice actor has a word that trips them up. Stephen Fry narrated the Harry Potter books in the UK, and he tells a story about that. He says he kept stumbling on the phrase "Harry pocketed it" while recording the third book. So he called J.K. Rowling and asked if he could say "Harry put it in his pocket" instead. She said no.

The way he tells it, she then wrote those three words into the later books on purpose. I have no idea how much of that is tongue in cheek. But it makes the point. A line somebody else finds easy can stop you cold in the middle of a session.

What do tongue twisters do for a voice actor?

They do two jobs. They wake up the muscles you speak with, and they show you which sounds you're lazy on.

The first job is the warm-up. Your lips and your tongue are muscles. If you hit record before your coffee is even done, you're asking them to work cold.

The second job matters more. Everybody has a sound they slur. For some people it's the R. For others it's the S that turns into a whistle on a sensitive mic. A twister repeats one sound until you can't fake it anymore, so it finds your weak sound in about thirty seconds.

What they don't do is make you a better actor. I want to be honest about that. A perfectly clean tongue twister read into the microphone still isn't a voice over.

How should you practice tongue twisters?

Go slow before you go fast, and record yourself so you can hear it.

Make every sound clear, even if it feels silly. Then speed it up a little. When it falls apart, back off to the last speed where it was clean. A fast read nobody can understand doesn't help you.

Then record yourself. Your phone is fine. Pick one twister and say it at three speeds, then listen back.

On a live in September I asked everybody in the chat a simple question. If you do a read two different ways, can you really hear the difference? The voice actors I've worked with who get better fastest are the ones who can.

There's one more drill I love, and it's the bridge from twisters into real acting. Take a short sentence like "the dog ran home." Say it four times, and hit a different word each time. Four reads of the same four words, and each one means something different.

A sentence usually has one idea in it. If you are emphasizing everything, you're not emphasizing anything.

Which tongue twisters should voice actors use?

Use the ones that go after your problem sound, and skip the ones you already do well. This table sorts all 25 by the sound they train.

What are the 25 tongue twisters?

Here they are. The classics come first and they get harder as you go.

1. One of the absolute classics. Peter Piper is great for your P sounds, and it sneaks in Rs and Ls too. A good basic workout for your mouth.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

2. Another classic is Betty and her bit of butter. This one helps you separate sounds in words that are close to each other. Batter and butter. Bitter and better.

Betty bought a bit of butter.
But the bit of butter Betty bought was bitter.
If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter will make my batter better.
So Betty bought a better bit of butter.

3. Shorter than the first two, but harder. This one uses digraphs, which are two letters that make one sound. Think sh or ch.

She sells seashells by the seashore. The seashells she sells are seashells, I'm sure.

4. A mix of digraphs and blends. A blend is two letters that each keep their own sound. Fl is a blend. So is br. This one's tough, gang.

Through three cheese trees, three free fleas flew.
While these fleas flew, a freezy breeze blew.
Freezy breeze made these three trees freeze.
Freezy trees made these trees' cheese freeze.
That's what made these three free fleas sneeze.

5. The famous woodchuck. It works the vowel sound in would and wood and could, plus more ch practice. It's also a good stretch before narration and other long-form work.

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 wood as a woodchuck would
if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

6. This one is about the difference between the vowels in slit and sleet and sheet. Give it a try.

I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit.
Upon a slitted sheet I sit.

7. Witch and which sound almost the same, but they mean completely different things. Say it three times fast and make sure the witch is a witch :)

Which witch is which? (x3)

8. The Swiss wristwatches. One of the trickier ones, and a great workout for your Ws.

Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches? (x3)

9. Leery Larry is only one sentence, but it's a good one for your Ls and your Rs.

A really leery Larry rolls readily to the road.

10. Some tricky pronunciations here. Focus on the short o sounds. It's a solid workout for sibilance too.

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block.

11. The imaginary menagerie. This one works the soft g sound. Try it really close to the mic.

Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie.

12. All the different sounds of th. Pay attention to each th word and listen to how different they are from each other.

The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.

13. For your sh and s sounds. Watch those hisses.

"Surely Sylvia swims!" shrieked Sammy, surprised. "Someone should show Sylvia some strokes so she shall not sink."

14. Fuzzy Wuzzy works your F sounds and your Zs. Say it slowly and deliberately at first, then as quickly as you can.

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear. A fuzzy bear was Wuzzy. Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't very fuzzy, was he?

15. Another good one for your Rs. It's a bit much at first, but once you get it, your Rs will rrrroll right out.

If you must cross a coarse cross cow across a crowded cow crossing, cross the coarse cross cow across the crowded cow crossing carefully.

16. Guinness World Records once listed this one as the most difficult tongue twister in English. That was in 1974, the last year Guinness tracked tongue twisters, according to NPR. Try it for yourself. It's a killer.

The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.

These last nine are a little more obscure. They might feel hard at first, but keep at them until the sounds are clean. You'll hear it in your reads.

17. Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.
18. Rory the warrior and Roger the worrier were reared wrongly in a rural brewery.
19. Send toast to ten tense stout saints' ten tall tents.
20. Green glass globes graciously glow greenly.
21. Nine nice night nurses are nursing nicely.
22. Fred fed Ted bread, and Ted fed Fred bread.
23. Susie works in a shoeshine shop. Where she shines she sits, and where she sits she shines.

24. I couldn't leave out the old favorite. Red leather, yellow leather. Three times, as fast as you can. In the UK they say "red lorry, yellow lorry," which is just as nasty.

25. And finally, near an ear, a nearer ear, a nearly eerie ear.

And a bonus one that came up on one of my lives, because somebody in the chat dared me. Rubber baby buggy bumpers. Say it five times. I overdid it on purpose, and you'll be surprised what it does for the next sentence you read.

If you want all of these on one page, grab the free printable warm-up card. It has the 25 twisters sorted by sound, so you can tape it next to your mic.

What does a five-minute warm-up look like?

It's one minute each of five things, and tongue twisters are only one of them. I'd rather you do five minutes every single day than half an hour once a week.

In minute two, blow air through loose lips like a little kid making a motorboat noise. If you hate lip trills, hum through a straw. I go through more of these in my voice acting exercises post.

In minute three, pick the two twisters that go after your problem sound. Don't pick the two you already do well.

For minute five, a 30-second commercial is perfect. You can check how long you ran with our free script timer.

Keep water next to you the whole time. The National Institutes of Health says the same thing in its guide to taking care of your voice. I also wrote about 5 reasons you should warm up before your voice over a while back.

Do tongue twisters help with audiobook narration?

Yes, and probably more than anywhere else, because narration is long. In a commercial you need to sound great for 30 seconds. In an audiobook you need chapter 30 to sound like chapter 1.

A couple of twisters before you start keeps your diction from getting sloppy as the hours go by. Do a quick one after a break too.

It also cuts down on pickups. Every flubbed word is a retake, and every retake is editing time. I wrote about where those hours go in how long it takes to narrate an audiobook.

Narrators should watch out for one thing, though. A book has hundreds of words you'd never pick for a warm-up. Character names and place names. Made-up words in fantasy.

So when you prep a book, pull the hardest names into a little list. Run them like twisters before the session. It's the same exercise, just with the words you're actually going to say.

What mistakes do people make with tongue twisters?

The big one is going for speed. Racing through Peter Piper is fun, but if half the sounds are mush, you're practicing being mushy.

The second mistake is carrying the twister voice into the real read. You warm up with crisp, over-pronounced consonants. Then you start the script and you still sound like you're doing a tongue twister. Casting doesn't want perfect diction. They want somebody talking to them.

So once you're warm, let it go. Read like a person. I made a video about how to sound conversational when you read a script. It has had over 26,000 views, so I know a lot of you fight this.

The third mistake is pushing through when you're tired or your throat hurts. A twister should never strain. If it does, stop. Drink some water.

And the last one is never getting past the warm-up. Twisters are the stretch before the run. They're not the run.

What should you read after you warm up?

Read a real script, because that's the job. We have 2,280 free scripts in the VO Journey scripts library.

If you're brand new, start with the scripts for beginners. They come with coaching notes and a seven-day practice plan.

If you want to narrate, go to the audiobook audition scripts. For character work, try the voice acting scripts.

Questions I hear most

How long should a voice actor warm up before recording?

Five to ten minutes is enough for most sessions. Go a little longer before a long audiobook day or a loud character session.

What is the hardest tongue twister?

Guinness once gave that title to number 16, the sixth sick sheik. In my experience the hardest one is whichever one goes after your own problem sound.

Do tongue twisters improve diction?

They help, because they make you repeat one sound until it's clean. The diction only sticks if you take it into real scripts and listen back to yourself.

Should I use tongue twisters before an audition?

A couple, yes, especially first thing in the morning. Then read one line of real copy as yourself before you hit record, so the warm-up voice doesn't follow you in.

What to do next

Twisters and scripts on your own will only get you so far. At some point you need somebody to tell you what they hear.

Once a month we open all four of our live classes on Zoom for a week, for free. Save a seat for the next Free Class Week and come hear real notes on real reads.

Have fun with these. Go out there and audition.

Anthony