The sixth sick sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick . is the toughest tongue twister according to guinness book of record.
That phrase was featured by Guinness World Records 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.
Despite the nod from Guinness, others have put forward their own challenges to the title. Researchers at MIT in Boston have declared that “Pad kid poured curd pulled cold” is the hardest tongue twister in history. While it’s easy enough to read, speaking it out loud without mispronouncing a syllable takes a special kind of verbal dexterity.
Dr. Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel and her team assert that ‘pad kid poured curd pulled cold’ is the toughest tongue twister that has ever been concocted. In fact, it is so difficult that when people were asked to repeat it rapidly ten times, they became so tongue-tied that they stopped speaking altogether. The twister revealed at the Fall Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America that was held in San Francisco from December 2nd-6th, was part of a study conducted by Stefanie’s team to get some insight into the human brain’s speech planning process.
The MIT team plan to continue their research by placing tiny transducers on the tongues of volunteers and measuring their articulation to try to gain further insight. Meanwhile, we can all drive people around us a little crazy by continually repeating a phrase that even the researchers agree makes no sense.
‘pad kid poured curd pulled cold’
