In the second of our two-part series on tongue exercises, Silke Kurpiers gives us a few more advanced exercises to try (some of which require pretzel sticks or straws) and goes more in-depth on practicing rolled Rs. Be sure to listen to Episode 48 first and get a handle on those exercises before trying these! Then for a treat, Silke shows us a few German tongue twisters to get things really moving:

Zehn zahme Ziegen zogen zehn Zentner Zucker zum Zoo.
Zwischen zwei Zwetschgenzweigen saßen zwei zwitschernde Schwalben.
Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische. Frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritz.
Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid.

You can find these (with some slight variations in text) and more German tongue twisters at the Wikipedia page entitled Zungenbrecher. Along the left side of that page, you can also find fun tongue twisters in many other languages, and they seem to have even more at the actual entry for Tongue Twisters, so once you've mastered these you can move on to Italian, Spanish, etc! Look for the pdf drawings of the tongue exercises in a separate blog entry entitled Special Edition Download. And keep your eyes on the Facebook page--Silke and I are planning to create a YouTube video so you can actually see these tongue exercises in action rather than just listening! I'll let you know when we get that posted. Since we are headed into crunch time at the opera house and most people are in finals weeks, on university break or dealing with a heavy schedule of holiday concerts, The Diction Police will be back mid-January with all-new episodes. Please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with questions, comments or suggestions. Have a wonderful and blessed holiday season! See you in 2012 :-)
 
NB-The long-awaited Tongue Exercises Video can now be found at The Diction Police: Special Diction Unit! Come check it out!