Is my tongue-twister okay or terrible?

[englishhobby]

I have made up my own tongue-twister. How awful is it?
Bitsy Pig eats sticky titbits.

 

[GoesStation]

It's okay, I think, for BrE-speakers. Americans would get a laugh out of titbits, which looks like a mildly vulgar name for miscellaneous pieces of breasts. (Our word is "tidbits".)

It's not really a tongue-twister for a native Anglophone though.

 

[englishhobby]

Thank you, I also thought about the connotation you have mentioned. I'd better not use it.

How about "Bitsy Pig eats sticky pieces"?

It's not really a tongue-twister for a native Anglophone though.

Yes, I think there should be some other word to call such sentences like mine to practice certain English sounds that don't exist in my language (the short is often mispronounced). Perhaps, it can be called a "chant"?

 

[GoesStation]

I like your revision. I think you should feel free to call it a tongue-twister, which means "a phrase which is difficult to pronounce". It's a tongue-twister for people who speak languages lacking the short i, and a good phrase to practice the lengthened /s/ sound in "eats sticky".

 

[Tdol]

Thank you, I also thought about the connotation you have mentioned.

It doesn't have those connotations in BrE, where it is a normal enough word, though we use the word tit in that sense, and for an idiot.

 

[englishhobby]

It doesn't have those connotations in BrE, where it is a normal enough word, though we use the word tit in that sense, and for an idiot.

in the
I felt it because of the word 'tit' as part of it and also because we have a similar sounding word in my language which means the same as tit (1st meaning).

 

[Tdol]

We also use tit for a family of birds.

 

[emsr2d2]

Just to clarify Tdo's comment above, "family of birds" doesn't mean "mummy bird, daddy bird and baby birds"!

Tits are part of the Paridae family of birds. In the UK, within that family, there are six species: blue tit, coal tit, crested tit, great tit, marsh tit and willow tit.

 

[Skrej]

North American has a few members of the tit family, although here you'll hear them called 'titmouse' (titmice?).

I'm not much of a bird person, so without some research I'm not sure if a tit is just the shortened form of titmouse or if they're a distinct species.

I always found the word 'titmouse' amusing, not only for the slang term, but also the 'mouse' bit. I'm guessing 'mouse' is a size reference.

Edit: And of course there's the unrelated phrase 'tit for tat', where 'tit' means something like 'blow or strike'.