After seeing the German tongue twisters node, I decided to list
some common tongue twisters in Finnish...
- "Ärrän kierrän orren ympäri, ässän pistän taskuuni" = "I twist an
'r' around a beam, I put an 's' to my pocket."
- "Kirkon peräpilari" = "The pillar in the back of a church"
- "Vesihiisi sihisi hississä" = "A water demon hissed in an elevator"
- "Mustan kissan paksut posket" = "Thick cheeks of a black cat"
- "Yksikseskös istuskelet?" = "Are you sitting alone?"
- "Yksikseskös yskiskelet?" = "Are you coughing alone?" (Damn, these
things are hard to type too! =)
- "Keskustelijat keskustelivat keskuksesta." = "Discussing people
discussed about a center."
- "Mun mummuni muni mun mammani, mun mammani muni mun" = "My grandmother
made my mother, my mother made me." (literally "munia" = "lay
eggs", I translated it thus because this thing sounded too much like
chicken-talk =) (Also the refrain of one once-popular song...)
- "Appilan pappilan apupapin papupata pankolla kiehuu, kuohuu"/"paukkuu ja porisee" = "The bean pot of assistant minister of Appila parsonage is boiling and foaming/popping and boiling on top of the oven"
- "Ääliö, älä lyö! Ööliä läikkyy!" = "Idiot, don't hit me! That'd spill the beer!"
Here are some things that I cite here, to show the flexibility of Finnish language (and importance of difference between short and long vowels):
- "Kokko! Kokkoo kokkoo koko kokko." "Koko kokkoko?" "Koko kokko."
- "Kokko! Get the whole pile togheter." "Whole pile?" "Whole pile."
- "Tuli tuli, tuli tuuli, tuuli tuuli, tuli sammui."
- "Came fire, came wind, wind blew, fire got out."
(Most of these are pretty much Widely Known Folklore and as such not copyrighted; I picked the ones I had heard before from Matti Punttila's book "Haaskannäköinen Tyttö", WSOY 1998, ISBN 951-0-23238-6)
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