SPANISH LESSON 17: Trabalenguas

!Hola mis amigos!

It’s time for another Spanish lesson.  Today’s lesson involves you doing a lot of talking… or rather, sound making!  We’re doing tongue twisters.  The Spanish words for it is trabalenguas, which roughly translates to tongue work… and we’ll most certainly be working those tongues.

I will warn you that these aren’t the easiest speaking exercises but they’re not the hardest either.  As with anything you’re doing in language learning, practice and repetition is key.  Listen again and again and try to repeat it again and again. You’ll get there.

First, you can listen to this 2 minute clip.  There are five tongue twisters.  After the narrator says the phrase for you to hear the pronunciation, there is a pause for you to try to repeat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZgEH3pDKn8&w=560&h=315

Video Courtesy Cosas de Peques.

Trabalenguas or tongue twisters are fun, short sentences that often play on words with similar sounds.  They make use of alliteration and onomatopoeia.  The meanings are often more nonsensical as the sound of the words is far more important than context.  As such, I won’t post translations of these 5 tongue twisters but I will provide the text in Spanish so that you can practice just saying these phrases, at your own pace.  Copy these phrases, keep them nearby and practice them over and over trying to increase your speed each time!

Get this blog post as a convenient download.

Pepe pela
Screen Shot 2019-01-30 at 9.28.51 AM
La bruja
el cielo

Happy practicing!!!

Get this blog post as a convenient download. Cut out and save these colourful trabalenguas for use in your class or for your own practice. Get download here.

For Spanish lessons on Travel, download my FREE e-Book: Spanish Phrasebook for Travel.

Travel Spanish Free eBook cover

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5 Comments

  1. ambroseandelsie January 31, 2019 at 11:19 am

    These are so awesome! My tongue got tangled up just from reading them without the video. 😆 The “Pepe pela patatas” one made me smile. It made me think of the “Peter picked a peck of pickles” tongue twister.

    Reply
    1. K D January 31, 2019 at 9:08 pm

      Yes!!! Lol. It so is like Peter. haha. These are hard work. I can barely read them in one go, far less for reading them fast 😄

      Reply
  2. Brenda October 2, 2019 at 4:44 pm

    Great trabalenguas!

    Reply
    1. K D October 6, 2019 at 9:39 pm

      Gracias!

      Reply
  3. Grabriela September 26, 2020 at 1:40 am

    Tres tristes tigres tragan trigo en un trigal.

    Reply

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