Think you’ve mastered Chinese pronunciation? Try saying this phrase: “红鲤鱼与绿鲤鱼与驴 (Hóng lǐyú yǔ lǜ lǐyú yǔ lǘ, Red carp, green carp, and donkey).”
Learning a new language is challenging at the best of times, but most of all when you encounter tongue twisters. In Chinese, tongue twisters are called raokouling (绕口令), and typically use a lot of confusing homophones, alliteration, and repetition in order to be as hard to say as possible. Throughout history, poets, literati, and common people made up tongue twisters as creative exercises, forms of speech therapy, wise sayings, or simply for fun.
The oldest Chinese tongue twister can supposedly be traced back 5,000 years ago in the essay “Song of Slingshot (《弹歌》),” attributed to the legendary Yellow Emperor. It detailed how people in prehistoric times made slingshots and hunted, and goes, “断竹，续竹；飞土，逐宍 (Duàn zhú, xù zhú; fēi tǔ, zhú ròu, Break the bamboo and chop the bamboo to form a bow and arrow; shoot the arrow and chase the prey).” This phrase consists of several characters with the same initial consonants, the basic element of a tongue twister.
Given the fun in making complicated and musical rhymes, many poets and literati in ancient China were inspired to create tongue twisters. In the 5th century, there even emerged literary tongue twisters called kouchi shi (口吃诗) or “stammer poems,” a type of poem that uses a lot of alliterations. Some believe the name comes from the fact that people reciting the poem sound like they have a stutter, while others claim these poems were actually invented to cure speech problems, like stuttering. Poet Liu Houkun (刘厚坤) of the Ming dynasty (1368 — 1644) wrote a famous tongue twister poem named “Qixi (《七夕》),” which goes: “年年来念汝，两泪落牛郎 (Niánnián lái niàn rǔ, liǎng lèi luò Niúláng, Every year I come to miss you, while I shed tears like farm boy Niulang [who was separated from his beloved goddess Zhinü]).”
However, these deliberately abstruse works didn’t win favor among ordinary people, who made up folk tongue twisters with more down-to-earth themes. Many also commented on society and reflected folk wisdom. A popular tongue twister from the 1920s, titled “Field Snails and Mule (《螺蛳与骡子》),” criticized the idea of “every man for himself”; another called “Compensation for a Bowl (《赔钵钵》),” popular in the 1960s, promoted the spirit of sharing among people. See if you can say them both:
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