Tongue twisters (tongue twisters) - Hayakuchikotoba

Japanese: 早口ことば(早口言葉) - はやくちことば

It is a form of language play in which difficult phrases, lines, or folk songs are spoken quickly without making any mistakes. The phrases are also called "haya-koto", "haya-kotoba", "haya-kotoba", etc. However, a distinction is made between "tongue-twisters" which are words that are difficult to pronounce, and "haya-kotoba" which are not necessarily difficult to pronounce but are focused on being spoken quickly. The most popular examples are "red scroll paper, yellow scroll paper", "nama-mugi, nama-gome, nama-tamago", "the customer next door is a customer who often eats persimmons", and "frog pyoko pyoko three pyoko pyoko awase pyoko pyoko 6 pyoko pyoko pyoko". It can be seen that many of them take advantage of the difficulty of pronouncing the repeated or overlapping sounds m, g, k, and p.

Source: Heibonsha World Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition Information

Japanese:

通常，発音しにくい文句，せりふ，俗謡などをまちがえずに早口でいって遊ぶ言語遊戯の一つ。またその文句をいい，〈早口〉〈早口そそり〉〈早言（はやこと）〉〈早ことば〉などとも称する。ただし，舌をかみそうなことばを続けていうものをとくに〈舌もじり〉，必ずしも発音は難しくないがもっぱら早く唱えることに主眼を置くものを〈早口ことば〉として区別することもある。〈赤巻紙黄巻紙〉〈生麦生米生卵〉〈隣の客はよく柿食う客〉〈蛙ぴょこぴょこ三ぴょこぴょこあわせてぴょこぴょこ六ぴょこぴょこ〉などが最もポピュラーな例で，m音，g音，k音，p音などの繰返し，ないしはそれらの重複による発音の困難さを利用したものが多いことがわかる。

出典　株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典第２版について　情報

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