Tongue Twisters

Irish Wristwatch, Swiss Wristwatch

Where the rhyme comes from

Nobody knows who first said it, and we have not found it in print early enough to date. Wikipedia’s article on tongue twisters lists “Irish wristwatch, Swiss wristwatch” among the short phrases that only become twisters when repeated quickly — in the company of “Toy boat”, “Unique New York” and “Red lorry, yellow lorry” — but where the same article gives sources and dates for older twisters, it offers none for this one. Every dated use we could find belongs to the 2010s or later, in pronunciation lessons and short videos. That does not make the phrase new: classroom twisters often travel by word of mouth for years before anyone writes them down. It simply means the honest answer is author unknown, age unknown.

You may read that it began in American drama classes. That is a reasonable guess, given where the phrase is used today, but we have seen no evidence for it. What we can say is where it lives now. It is a favourite of “say it five times fast” challenge videos, and a working tool for pronunciation teachers. The site Rachel’s English uses “I wish to wash my Irish wristwatch” to drill the English r — learners often slip a w in its place — and the s, sh and ch sounds. Teachers stretch it further still: one English-pronunciation site offers “Rhys watched Ross switch his Irish wristwatch for a Swiss wristwatch”.

The verse above sets out the four forms you are most likely to meet. The doubled pair is the commonest, and the one Wikipedia gives. “Irish wristwatch” on its own is the two-word stress test. “I wish to wash my Irish wristwatch” is the sentence used in pronunciation drills. “Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches?” turns up in what people search for, though we have not traced it to any particular source. None of them is the original and the rest corruptions; all four are genuine wordings.

What does it mean?

Nothing beyond the sound. There is no watchmaker, no story and no hidden history — just two watches from two countries. People who ask what it means usually want to know why something so short is so hard to say.

Why it is so hard. Two short words hide three traps. The first is r against w: Irish asks for an r, wristwatch asks for another and then a w, and at speed the w starts to win — the very slip pronunciation teachers warn learners about, though native speakers make it too. The second is the spelling. Wristwatch opens with a w you must not say and, a syllable later, brings in the w of watch, which you must. The third is the hiss: the sh of Irish, the s of wrist, the ch of watch and the s of Swiss are near neighbours in the mouth, and the tongue has to keep resetting between them. A 1979 study of everyday slips of the tongue by Shattuck-Hufnagel and Klatt, cited in Wikipedia’s article on tongue twisters, found s and sh, and w and r, among the pairs that commonly trade places. That is a description of what the mouth does rather than settled science about this particular phrase, but anyone who tries it will feel each trap spring.

You will also see it called one of the hardest tongue twisters in the world. That is a boast from tongue-twister listing sites, not a measured ranking — we have found no source that actually ranks it. Rachel’s English, for one, puts the sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep higher.

Sharing it with children

Start slowly — much more slowly than feels necessary. Say “Irish”, then “wristwatch”, and let the child echo each one before joining them. Add “Swiss wristwatch” only when the first pair is clean, and speed up only when the whole line is. Racing from the start simply teaches the tangle.

Then make it tick. Clap on every syllable — I-rish, wrist-watch, Swiss, wrist-watch — like the tick-tock of a watch, and let one child be the watch-winder who decides how fast it runs. A slow old watch is easy; a watch that has been wound too tight is chaos, and the chaos is the fun. For a game of switching, call out “Irish” or “Swiss” at random and have the child answer with the right wristwatch.

Children who enjoy the hiss can move on to She Sells Sea Shells, which drills the same s and sh; those who conquer both can try the sixth sick sheik. In a classroom it makes a quick warm-up for listening to r and w — treat it as a game, not a lesson, and laugh along with every “Iwish wistwatch”.

Extra verses to sing

These verses aren’t traditional — they’re ours. Try them once the two wristwatches stop tangling.

More rhymes to explore

• The Sixth Sick Sheik’s Sixth Sheep’s Sick — the twister one pronunciation teacher rates harder still
• She Sells Sea Shells — the classic workout for s against sh
• Red Leather, Yellow Leather — another short pair of words repeated until it falls apart, with no known author