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Why is it so hard to say "toy boat" three times fast? · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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  Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, even, welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Hi Josh, Hi Chuck, I'm Chuck,
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  Speaker 1: Big Chuck, Hi Josh. This could arguably be the worst
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  Speaker 1: intro we've ever recorded. Chuck, what do you think? Maybe?
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  Speaker 1: All right, but let's not do it again. No, let's
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  Speaker 1: get raw and fresh baby. Okay, So Chuck, say toy
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  Speaker 1: boat three times fast now, toy boat, toy boat, toy boat,
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  Speaker 1: toy boat, toy boat. That actually at last one, when
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  Speaker 1: you correct yourself, that was pretty good. But the point
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  Speaker 1: is that you can't. You're not supposed to correct yourself.
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  Speaker 1: You want to hear me do it? Yeah, toy boat
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  Speaker 1: to boat. I can't do it. You just went into
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  Speaker 1: Tibet kind of. But Jerry, our producer, actually did it
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  Speaker 1: a few minutes ago when you were out of the
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  Speaker 1: room doing your push ups like you do between podcasts.
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  Speaker 1: It gives me pump Chuck. Yeah, she did it on
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  Speaker 1: the She's the big deal. Jerry does everything perfectly, um,
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  Speaker 1: but most people can't. I've never been enable to say
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  Speaker 1: toy boat three times. It's a tongue twister, it is.
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  Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And did you know, Chuck, that it's
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  Speaker 1: assumed that tongue to tongue see yeah, baby, Uh, tongue
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  Speaker 1: twisters are universal. Yes they are. I did not know
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  Speaker 1: that until we did a little research. All right, So
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  Speaker 1: you you have some from foreign lands. I do I
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  Speaker 1: want to hear something because I don't know any I
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  Speaker 1: found a Chinese one, and there is actually like an
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  Speaker 1: MP three maybe MP four that of this Chinese tongue twister.
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  Speaker 1: I was like, I'm not going to the trouble of
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  Speaker 1: learning that. Well, I will do my best to Japanese
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  Speaker 1: tongue twisters and their translations. So the first one is
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  Speaker 1: uh kiru pioco pioco, me pioco pioco, A wassat pioco pioco,
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  Speaker 1: move pioco pioco. That is a tongue twister. It is, boy,
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  Speaker 1: what does it mean? It translated loosely means take two
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  Speaker 1: sets of three frog croaks, add them together and they
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  Speaker 1: make six frog croaks beautiful like that. And here's another
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  Speaker 1: one's just a word to the wise. It is. It's
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  Speaker 1: word words to the wise. And here's another one from Japan,
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  Speaker 1: it is kono kogi wa hiki nuki nikki kogda, and
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  Speaker 1: that means the nail, this nail is hard to pull out.
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  Speaker 1: Really yeah, wow, so you you can kind of see
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  Speaker 1: how maybe a tongue twister in Japanese doesn't really translate
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  Speaker 1: into a tongue twister, you know, in English. But does
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  Speaker 1: she sells seashells down by the sea shore. That's kind
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  Speaker 1: of silly too, it is, but this nail is hard
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  Speaker 1: to pull out. It's more of like a that's a statement.
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  Speaker 1: You're right, you know, seashells, seashells, sea sells Jesus. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the descending in so basically chuck. Um. It's becoming increasingly
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  Speaker 1: apparent that as far as tongue twisters go, I have
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  Speaker 1: what you might call a phonological disorder. You heard of
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  Speaker 1: these I have? Okay, well I'll tell everybody else about it.
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  Speaker 1: You just sit there quietly, okay, Okay. So a phonological
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  Speaker 1: disorder is, basically, um, it's it's any time where you're
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  Speaker 1: developing in such a way that you aren't pronouncing certain phonemes.
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  Speaker 1: And a phoneme if you'll remember correctly when we were,
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  Speaker 1: you know, back in second or third grade, there was
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  Speaker 1: hooked down phonics. Remember hooked down phonics worked for me. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: so instead of a phonic, it's actually called a phoneme technically,
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  Speaker 1: but it's the same thing like buh boy boy. Right.
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  Speaker 1: Those are two phone names, two separate phonemes, and they're
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  Speaker 1: the way we pronounce words, and we learn how to um,
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  Speaker 1: how to pronounce different words, uh, phonetically. That's that's how
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  Speaker 1: we learned to read usually, um, and that's also how
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  Speaker 1: we learn to communicate. Now, if that development doesn't happen properly, Um,
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  Speaker 1: you can end up with a phonological disorder. Is that
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  Speaker 1: a speech impediment? Uh? Yeah, that's another way to put it.
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  Speaker 1: But um, a speech impediment could also include stuttering, which
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  Speaker 1: is not a phonological or yeah, a phonological disorder. Um,
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  Speaker 1: it's actually it's extraneous. But um, this is specifically with
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  Speaker 1: the pronunciation of a phoneme. Right, So let's say you
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  Speaker 1: didn't really get the gust sound. You're gonna have that
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  Speaker 1: apostrophe after the end and an I n G like
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  Speaker 1: nothing something right, And that's actually a sign that you
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  Speaker 1: may have a phonological disorder when you leave them off
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  Speaker 1: at the end, especially or when you substitute one for another, Right,
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  Speaker 1: Sarah Palin, give me an example. Well, that there was
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  Speaker 1: just kind of the common joke was that she never
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  Speaker 1: pronounced anything with the G on the end of it. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but I think that was just more colloquial. I think
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  Speaker 1: so too, And I think it was very very well
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  Speaker 1: studied colloquialism. Indeed, yea, so um that the so the
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  Speaker 1: phonological disorder thing, apparently anywhere from seven to ten percent
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  Speaker 1: of five year olds have one. Yeah, and uh, it
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  Speaker 1: can it can be really you know, like leaving the
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  Speaker 1: G off the end of a word. Uh, he's kind
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  Speaker 1: of mild. Um or it can be incredibly severe where
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  Speaker 1: no one understands the word you're saying, including your family. Right,
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  Speaker 1: Like you just you're essentially not making sense even though
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  Speaker 1: you know what you want to say. You're just you.
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  Speaker 1: No one can understand you. So therefore what's the point
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  Speaker 1: of communicating? Right, So that's severe, not like when you
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  Speaker 1: hear like a little kid say my shoulder holts. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Well actually that's part of development too. That's that that's
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  Speaker 1: either either they have a phonological disorder or they're still
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  Speaker 1: working out the kinks or their shoulder holts. Yeah, exactly, so. Um,
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  Speaker 1: and there's two there's two causes for phonological disorders right, well,
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  Speaker 1: actually there's three. The third one is just beyond cryptic.
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  Speaker 1: The first one is structural, right where your your brain
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  Speaker 1: isn't structurally developed in the normal way, and therefore there's
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  Speaker 1: there's something missing. Um, there's some neurons aren't connected. There's
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  Speaker 1: there's something that's that's structurally different about your brain that's
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  Speaker 1: going to keep you from being able to say certain phonemes.
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  Speaker 1: The other is neurological, where you're you're nervous system is
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  Speaker 1: and finally tuned quite enough to be able to really
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  Speaker 1: get the real polished phonemes, like like a z H
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  Speaker 1: sound or something like that, so you'd have trouble speaking French.
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  Speaker 1: I would say, probably uh. And the third one just
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  Speaker 1: scares me. It's um uh, it's a phonological disorder of
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  Speaker 1: indeterminate origin. Basically we have no idea, okay, And the
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  Speaker 1: reason we have no idea is because we aren't entirely
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  Speaker 1: certain how we speak, how we hear, how we speak.
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  Speaker 1: We don't know. Did you know that I did not
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  Speaker 1: know that we'll give me something you got Well, I
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  Speaker 1: thought you were going to talk about the tongue. Oh yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we'll get to the tongue. Is now a good time?
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  Speaker 1: I think that was a great time. Well, the tongue
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  Speaker 1: is actually, as everyone knows, very important to your speech,
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  Speaker 1: uh and taste and taste. Obviously, the tongue is connected
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  Speaker 1: to the base of your mouth by a piece of tissue,
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  Speaker 1: A vertical piece of tissue. Yeah, what's it called? Everyone
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  Speaker 1: wants to know that, and now we know it's that's
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  Speaker 1: called the lingual uh franulum? Is that how you would
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  Speaker 1: pronounce it? I know we constantly butcher pronunciations that feel bad.
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  Speaker 1: The lingual framulum. That's what I went with. Okay, I
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  Speaker 1: like that, and that's what the little thing is called. Um.
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  Speaker 1: If yours is too short, uh, you you may get
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  Speaker 1: a speech impediment because of that, because your tongue has
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  Speaker 1: to have a certain amount of movement, right to be
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  Speaker 1: able to carry out to produce these phonemes, right, right,
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  Speaker 1: But you can have it corrected. They're actually surgeries. Still
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  Speaker 1: a little bit of snipe, A little snip here and there.
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  Speaker 1: Might as well talk about putting bamboo shoots under your
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  Speaker 1: fingernails when I think of like snipping the lingual formulum. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that's bad. Uh. So, Yeah, the tongue has a lot
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  Speaker 1: to do with how you pronounce things, and so has
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  Speaker 1: everything to do with So if you have a problem
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  Speaker 1: with the frenulum there, then you're gonna have some issues
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  Speaker 1: with your speech. And I imagine there's probably an opposite
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  Speaker 1: disorder to where you're maybe lacking a lingual framulum and
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  Speaker 1: your tongue just kind of lalls around in your mouth. Interesting,
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  Speaker 1: maybe you have like a very little control over it.
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  Speaker 1: I would think that would produce a speech impediment as well.
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  Speaker 1: But you just made that up, right, I did. But
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  Speaker 1: you know that somebody somewhere out there has that problem,
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  Speaker 1: and if you do, send us an email. Thanks for
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  Speaker 1: tuning in. So okay, chuckers, Um, you want to get
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  Speaker 1: back to the brain part, uh, because really, your tongue
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  Speaker 1: is not doing anything on its own. It's obeying your brain,
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  Speaker 1: all right. So it all comes back to the brain essentially,
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  Speaker 1: doesn't It always does. Um. So there's this guy who
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  Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, his name is al Lieberman. I
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  Speaker 1: think he was a yalely um, and he came up
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  Speaker 1: with this thing called the motor theory of speech perception, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: And basically this theory said that to produce speech, we
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  Speaker 1: used the same areas of the brain that we that
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  Speaker 1: we used to hear to listen, right, So it's like
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  Speaker 1: a mimicking type of thing. It's basically what this guy's
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  Speaker 1: point was is that when we hear something, we hear
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  Speaker 1: it like we're speaking it. Right, maybe we cut it
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  Speaker 1: into phone emes um, but it's it's basically the reverse process,
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  Speaker 1: which actually a lot of people bought into for for
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  Speaker 1: many many years, and then it kind of fell out
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  Speaker 1: of favor in the eighties, right right. But then almost
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  Speaker 1: as soon as it fell out of favor favor, some
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  Speaker 1: some studies started coming around that actually supported it, and
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  Speaker 1: now it's gaining strength again, especially since the evan of
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  Speaker 1: the m R. I. But you want to tell them
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  Speaker 1: about that study that really kind of suggests that we
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  Speaker 1: do here the same way we speak, the Haber and
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  Speaker 1: Haber study. As I can't figure out their brother and sister,
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  Speaker 1: I seen they're probably husband and wife. Yeah, Yeah, they
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  Speaker 1: did some research, and what what they did was they
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  Speaker 1: got some college aged subjects and had them and silently
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  Speaker 1: read sentences that had tongue twisters, right, and then they
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  Speaker 1: also had them a control group who uh, I'm sorry.
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  Speaker 1: The control group was a different sentence that did not
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  Speaker 1: have a tongue to us, just a regular sentence. Right.
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  Speaker 1: So they found out that it took longer to read
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  Speaker 1: to silently read the tongue twisters than it did for
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  Speaker 1: the sentences that that did not contain them. Right. And
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  Speaker 1: these are all fully developed um college age test subjects,
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  Speaker 1: And so if if we aren't using the same process
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  Speaker 1: in reverse, we shouldn't have any trouble silently reading a
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  Speaker 1: tongue twister. But it suggests that we we read by
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  Speaker 1: breaking things up into phonemes, just like we do when
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  Speaker 1: we're speaking, right, which would suggest that the motor theory
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  Speaker 1: of speech uh is correct? Right, which I agree with
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  Speaker 1: because I looked up some some cool tongue twisters and
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  Speaker 1: I have to read them slower in my head than
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  Speaker 1: I just like I would when I say him right,
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  Speaker 1: like what? Well, Uh, there's one. I believe it's the
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  Speaker 1: Guinness holds a Guinness Record for being and I can
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  Speaker 1: barely get through this one for being the most difficult
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  Speaker 1: tongue twister, and that is how do you quantify that
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  Speaker 1: world record? Well, we'll have to ask in us about that.
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  Speaker 1: It is the sixth six sheets, six sheeps sick. I
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  Speaker 1: can hardly get through that. So the six six I
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  Speaker 1: can't even say it, can I try? Yeah, it's it's
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  Speaker 1: at the top there. Okay, So the six six sheics,
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  Speaker 1: six sheeps sick man, that's pretty good. Thank you. I
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  Speaker 1: just overcame the world record holder for toughest tongue twister.
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  Speaker 1: That's impressive. Yeah, thanks a lot. And there's also something
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  Speaker 1: called spoonerisms. Did you look into that? Uh. Spoonerism is
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  Speaker 1: when there's a transposition of it's usually an initial sound
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  Speaker 1: of two or more words. So for instance, tons of
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  Speaker 1: soil versus sons of toil, that's a spoonerism. And it's
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  Speaker 1: and it's actually a lot of times are designed. People
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  Speaker 1: make up a spoonerism that will get you to say
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  Speaker 1: a curse word by accident, like I U p h No,
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  Speaker 1: not exactly. More like, I'm not a pheasant plucker. I'm
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  Speaker 1: the pheasant plucker's mate, and I'm only plucking pheasants because
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  Speaker 1: the pheasant plucker is late. So if someone I got
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  Speaker 1: to that fast enough, they might accidentally say a bad word. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we have to try that later once it's you know, off,
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  Speaker 1: the recording button is off. And interesting, they also found
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  Speaker 1: out there they're also sign language uh twisters, and they
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  Speaker 1: called us finger fumblers. I wow, how about that. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't tell you that one. So that's a that's a
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  Speaker 1: sign language spoonerism, a sign language a tongue twister. And
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  Speaker 1: I did not find any. I tried to research and
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  Speaker 1: find some. So if anyone out there knows of any
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  Speaker 1: sign language finger fumblers, we'd love to hear about it. Well,
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  Speaker 1: that's pretty interesting. Um. Actually that kind of leads us
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  Speaker 1: back to the whole toy boat thing. Um, As it
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  Speaker 1: turns out like there's no definitive answer for why it's
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  Speaker 1: tough for us to say toy boat right, whether it's
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  Speaker 1: it's physical like the tongue can't move fast enough. You
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  Speaker 1: just said it funny in saying it. Yeah, I'm from
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  Speaker 1: Ohio and sometimes you can hear that every once in
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  Speaker 1: a while. Um, and uh, So we don't know if
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  Speaker 1: it's if it's physical, like the tongues just incapable. Like
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  Speaker 1: we found a couple of phonemes that we can string together,
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  Speaker 1: that the tongue doesn't move fast enough to say it
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  Speaker 1: three times fast, or if it's a brain glitch, right,
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  Speaker 1: if we if there are finger what are they calling
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  Speaker 1: finger fumbler? Finger fumblers even though you're producing language, you're
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  Speaker 1: moving your fingers, So I would imagine you're using a
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  Speaker 1: different region of the brain for that, or maybe an
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  Speaker 1: additional region of the brain. So, uh, yeah, we don't.
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  Speaker 1: We can't say for certain whether it's the brain or
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  Speaker 1: the tongue that's responsible. It could be the tongue. Think
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  Speaker 1: about it, toy boat right, um, the going from the
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  Speaker 1: oi like the tongue is at the bottom of your mouth.
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  Speaker 1: To boat your your tongue has to go back up
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  Speaker 1: and kind of click on the sides along your molars. True,
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  Speaker 1: that may be just something that it can't do very quickly,
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  Speaker 1: or it could be you know, your your motor system
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  Speaker 1: in your in your rain is not working correctly. Right.
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  Speaker 1: These things really frustrate me. Um. I don't know if
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  Speaker 1: it's a little kid in me from class coming out,
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  Speaker 1: but any anything like this or anytime someone uh you know,
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  Speaker 1: the rub your stomach and pat your head or any
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  Speaker 1: of those physical things with them basically where you trick
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  Speaker 1: your brain. I hate those. Yeah, it reduces me too.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like you know to like the single cell organism.
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  Speaker 1: I just can't work it out. Well, don't feel too bad, Chuck,
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  Speaker 1: because I have one fast fact for you that I
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  Speaker 1: think you're gonna feel better about. The average speaker only
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  Speaker 1: makes about one error for every thousand words spoken. Really,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: and I would say you're above average, So don't feel
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  Speaker 1: too bad that I have more or below average? Below average? Well,
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  Speaker 1: there's my one, right. Yeah. I think if you counted
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: out the mistakes that I make in a podcast, that
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: would be much higher than that. But I think that's
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  Speaker 1: a little different than normal speaking conversation. I feel the pressure. Well,
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  Speaker 1: if you guys out there want to see the word
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  Speaker 1: lingual a frenulum and by word, of course, I mean words,
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  Speaker 1: there's two for me. Um. You can type in why
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  Speaker 1: can't you say toy boat in our search bar at
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. But first before we let
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: you go to me where yet? Because we have listener mail, Yes, Josh,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: we have listener mail. Yes, this was just one piece
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: of mail from our fan Lila Feldman, and Lila's writing
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: in about our what to Do with the Dead body episode. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I love that she does too, but she had a
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: little bit of a problem with it. And so we're
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: gonna read this because I don't want people to think
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: we just cherry pick, you know, the kudos to ourselves. No,
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  Speaker 1: definitely don't. So she writes in and says that I
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: was a little disappointed with a recent podcast because you
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: didn't mention some older and more traditional ways of burial
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: that can be considered green, which is a very good point.
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  Speaker 1: For instance, Jewish burial, traditionally someone was just wrapped in
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: a shroud and put in the ground, and then that
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: eventually evolved to a pine box. But that would have
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: been an old school way to have a green burial
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: traditional Jewish Paris. It makes sense, does And another method
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  Speaker 1: which no one uses nowadays, uh, that's popular in Roman
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: times still around the Turkish Empire, is to just bury
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the body as is in the ground, wait for the
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  Speaker 1: flesh and decomposed, and then dig out the bones. And
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: then you usually put those bones in the catacombs and
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: or taken with the family when they were trying to
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: like escape a tyrant or go on vacation, even they
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  Speaker 1: would kick these bones or works really good for a
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: nice souper, yeah, a nice consumm Yeah. So that was
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: from Laila Feldman, and we appreciate Laila writing in. And
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure there were all sorts of ancient ways of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: dealing with dead bodies that we failed to consider. So
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  Speaker 1: we we kind of had a modern take on it.
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  Speaker 1: But right we just get so frantically caught up in
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the green movement thing. You know, we just keep looking forward,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: looking forward, right backward. There's a lot of answers if
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: you look back, and if you'd like to take Chuck
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: and Eyed a task in a very puritanical manner, you
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: can send an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. M HM
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: It's ready, are you