Rory's little rabbit really loves rolling round the long red lawn.
R and L are easy enough on their own. Put them next to each other again and again, and your tongue suddenly forgets its job. Mix them up in real life, and right becomes light, or grass becomes glass.
Sounds to Practise
- L /l/, as in little, loves, lawn. Touch the tip of your tongue to the bump just behind your top teeth, and let the sound flow out around the sides of your tongue. Hold it and it hums: lllll.
- R /r/, as in Rory, red, round. This time the tip of your tongue touches nothing. Pull it back slightly, curl it up a little, and round your lips a bit. It sounds a bit like a gentle growl: rrrrr.
Quick test: say lllll, then rrrrr. For L, your tongue tip is touching. For R, it floats. That switch, touch versus float, is the whole challenge.
🐢 Start Slow
Say each chunk slowly. Feel your tongue touch for every L and float for every R.
Rory's little rabbit
really loves rolling
round the long
red lawn.
Now join them into two halves: Rory's little rabbit really loves rolling … round the long red lawn.
🚶 Normal Speed
Say the whole sentence at your normal speed, as if you were telling a friend about a very happy rabbit. Keep the rhythm bouncy, with the stress on the important words:
ROry's LITtle RABbit REALly LOVES ROLLing ROUND the LONG RED LAWN.
Clear beats fast. Every R and every L should still sound different.
🚀 Tongue-Twister Mode
Ready? Say it three times in a row, as fast as you can:
Rory's little rabbit really loves rolling round the long red lawn.
If your tongue trips, you're in good company. Slow down for one round, then try again.
Why Is This So Difficult?
The two sounds are made in almost the same place, but in opposite ways.
- For L your tongue tip must touch. For R it must not touch. In this sentence, it has to change almost every syllable.
- Really and rolling hide both sounds inside one word: R at the start, L in the middle. Your tongue must switch mid-word.
- Long red lawn goes L, R, L across three quick words, with no rest between them.
- In some languages, such as Japanese and Korean, R and L aren't two separate sounds. Learners who speak them often find English R and L hard even to hear apart, so saying them apart takes extra practice.
That's why this twister is useful: it trains the fast touch-and-float switch you need in everyday words.
Words to Notice
Swap R and L in these pairs, and the meaning changes completely:
- right / light
- rock / lock
- read / lead
- fry / fly
- grass / glass
- crown / clown
Try each pair slowly, then quickly: right, light, right, light.
OddLingo Challenge
- Round 1: say it slowly, chunk by chunk, with every R and L clear.
- Round 2: say the whole sentence once at normal speed.
- Round 3: say it three times fast without stopping.
Bonus round: practise the trickiest part on its own: long red lawn, long red lawn, long red lawn.
Did You Know?
- In many accents of England, an R at the end of a word often isn't pronounced at all: car sounds like "cah". In American, Scottish and Irish English, that R is usually pronounced. Both are correct English.
- The word colonel (an army officer) is spelled with an L but pronounced like kernel. English spelling strikes again! It's the same kind of mismatch behind though, through, tough and thought.
Related Practice
- Six Shy Sheep: another tongue twister, this time switching between S and SH.