Editor in chief at IamExpat Media
Fancy showing off your German language skills to friends and family? A tongue twister is a (usually nonsense) sentence that groups together similar-sounding words to challenge your pronunciation - which makes practising German tongue twisters (deutsche Zungenbrecher) a great way of getting your pronunciation on point for that German course.
Let’s warm up with a few easy tongue twisters in German to get your mouth going.
This one’s got a nice rhythm to it that helps with the pronunciation. It means: The sound vibrates slowly along the slope - which demonstrates that tongue twisters don’t always translate between languages very well!
We told you all tongue twisters are usually nonsense: this one combines food and weddings to make a tricky sentence that makes absolutely no sense. Red cabbage is red cabbage and a wedding dress is a wedding dress.
This German tongue twister works in English too! When flies fly after flies, flies fly after flies. Now say it 10 times at speed.
Croon this one to your pet: the cats scratch in the cat box, in the cat box the cats scratch.
Now things are getting a little trickier. This one also kind of works in English: If you like wax masks, Max makes wax masks out of wax mask wax. In German, it’s a good way to practise both the hard and the soft “ch” sounds.
Famously, the German language is full of long words packed with consonants, making these tongue twisters even more of a challenge for non-native speakers! No wonder a tongue twister is known as a Zungenbrecher in German - literally, a tongue breaker!
If you’re up for a challenge, here are some hard tongue twisters in German. Try repeating these five or 10 times over.
Time for a classic German tongue twister: Fisherman’s Fritz fishes for fresh fish, fresh fish is what the fisherman’s Fritz fishes. Even native speakers struggle with this one.
There are so many Ts we’re having trouble seeing the wood for the trees! This one-word tongue twister translates to: “An attack on the aunt of a Hottentot potentate.” The trick is to break it down into more manageable sections.
Get practising that hard Z sound with this tricky tongue twister! It means: On October 10, at 10.10am, 10 game goats pulled 10 centners of sugar to the zoo.
Snails are startled when they lick snails because, to the dismay of many snails, snails don’t taste good. All we can say is: Amen.
A little bit of sound logic in this one: The fat roofer tiles your roof, so thank the fat roofer, that the fat roofer tiled your roof.
And this one gets your conditional tense muscles working as well! We Viennese washerwomen would wash white laundry if we knew where soft, warm water was.
Ready for a doozy? In our humble opinion, this has to be the hardest tongue twister out there, anywhere.
Don’t be fooled! It might not look long, but Streichholzschächtelchen is famously one of the hardest words to say in the German language - just search it on YouTube and you’ll see even German people struggling! It also happens to be one of the longest German words, so this one is a double whammy of difficulty.
It means: She puts the small Czech matchbox on the table, on the table she puts the small Czech matchbox. If you can do it without struggling, we bow down to you!
Is your tongue in knots yet? If so, try them all again! It won’t be long until you’re nailing those hard consonants and glottal stops. Keep going until your tongue breaks!
Thumb image credit: Jacquelynn Brynn / Shutterstock.com