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How tongue twisters delight word lovers across the globe
绕口令是如何让世界各地的词汇爱好者高兴的
What is the most difficult tongue twister in the English language? What about the most difficult in any language? On social media and YouTube, in language classes and in scholarly books, word lovers around the world are having fun trying to answer these questions, mangling many mouthfuls of morphemes as they go. Let’s first check in with the experts. According to Guinness World Records, the most challenging English twister is “The sixth sick sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick.” It plays around with a k-s-th consonant cluster, a difficult enough sound for many native English speakers, let alone speakers of English as a second language.
英语中最难的绕口令是什么？在所有语言中最难的绕口令是什么？在社交媒体和YouTube上，在语言课上，在学术书籍中，世界各地的词汇爱好者正乐此不疲地试图回答这些问题，他们一边说一边把很多语素弄得乱七八糟。让我们先咨询一下专家。根据吉尼斯世界纪录，最具挑战性的英语绕口令是“第六位生病的酋长的第六只羊生病了”。它有一个k-s-th辅音集群，对许多以英语为母语的人来说，这个音已经够难了，更不用说把英语作为第二语言的人了。
Guinness stopped monitoring the tongue twister category in 1974, so we turn to the academics for updated information. In 2013, speech communication scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a particularly tricky twister to help them study the ways speech can go wrong: “pad kid poured curd pulled cod.” While this is nowhere near as elegant as the previous one, it is extremely hard to say – none of the scientists’ test subjects could get through it 10 times, and I find it hard to say even once.
吉尼斯在1974年停止了对绕口令类别的跟踪调查，所以我们向学者们寻求最新的信息。2013年，麻省理工学院的语言交流科学家开发了一个特别棘手的绕口令，以帮助他们研究语言出错的方式：“帕德·基德倒出了凝乳拉鳕鱼”。虽然这个绕口令远不及前一个优美，但很难说——科学家们的测试对象中没有一个人能说10次，我发现连一次都很难说。
While English has some hefty consonant clusters of its own, they’re nothing compared to those found in Slavic languages and in Georgian. Czech has a tongue twister with no vowels but plenty of rolled r’s: Strč prst skrz krk (stick your finger through your throat). A single Georgian word can be a tongue twister: Gvprtskvni (you peel us) has eight consonant sounds before its lone vowel.
虽然英语本身也有一些很重的辅音集群，但它们与斯拉夫语言和格鲁吉亚语中的辅音集群相比微不足道。捷克语有一个没有元音但有很多r音的绕音：Strč prst skrz krk（把手指伸进喉咙）。一个格鲁吉亚单词可以是一个绕口令：Gvprtskvni（你剥我们）在它唯一的元音前有八个辅音。
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