Turkish Tongue Twisters (Tekerleme) for Kids: 10 Classics With Meanings

Ask a Turkish grandparent for a tekerleme and you may hear about a barber, an eagle or a bowl of garlic yogurt, said faster and faster until everyone laughs. For families far from Türkiye, tongue twisters bring Turkish into car rides and bedtimes. Here are ten classics, from easy to hard, with plain English meanings and the sound that makes each one tricky.

What is a tekerleme?

Tekerleme is the Turkish word for a short, bouncy rhyme that is fun to say. It covers fairy-tale openings such as Evvel zaman içinde ("once upon a time"), counting-out rhymes for choosing who is "it", and tongue twisters, which also have their own name, yanıltmaç, from a verb meaning "to trip someone up". They are anonymous folk rhymes, so versions differ from family to family.

10 classic Turkish tongue twisters, from easy to hard

Easy starters

1. Dal sarkar kartal kalkar, kartal kalkar dal sarkar.
"The branch droops, the eagle takes off; the eagle takes off, the branch droops."
The trap is r and l swapping places in sarkar and kalkar. Only four different words: a good first one.

2. Şu köşe yaz köşesi, şu köşe kış köşesi, ortada su şişesi.
"This corner is the summer corner, that corner is the winter corner, and in the middle, a water bottle."
Watch the end: a plain s in su, then ş, the "sh" sound, all through şişesi.

3. Üç tunç tas kayısı hoşafı.
"Three bronze bowls of apricot compote."
Short but sneaky: ü, u and a with ç, the "ch" sound, in between.

Middle ones

4. Bu kara kantar kırk kilo kara katran tartar.
"This black scale weighs forty kilos of black tar."
Packed with k, r and a. Try not to turn kantar into katran.

5. Kırk kırık küp, kırkının da kulpu kırık küp.
"Forty cracked jars, and all forty have cracked handles."
The dotless ı, the u and the ü sit side by side. Some families leave out the first kırık.

6. Şu evi badanalamalı mı, yoksa badanalamamalı mı?
"Should we whitewash this house, or should we not?"
Turkish can put "not" inside the verb as a tiny -ma-, so the two long words differ by one syllable.

7. Bir berber bir berbere, "Bire berber, gel beraber bir berber dükkânı açalım," demiş.
"One barber said to another: 'Hey, barber, come, let's open a barber shop together.'"
A parade of b and r. Bire is an old-fashioned "hey!", and some versions say bre.

Hard ones for grown-ups

8. Şu yoğurdu sarımsaklasak da mı saklasak, sarımsaklamasak da mı saklasak?
"Should we add garlic to this yogurt and keep it, or keep it without garlic?"
The short saklasak, "should we keep it", hiding inside sarımsaklasak trips almost everyone.

9. Şemsi Paşa Pasajı'nda sesi büzüşesiceler.
Roughly: "In the Şemsi Paşa Arcade, may their voices shrivel up!"
A joking grumble that makes little sense even in Turkish. The point is the mix of s, ş and z.

10. Al bu takatukaları takatukacıya götür. Takatukacı bu takatukaları takatukalatmazsa, al bu takatukaları takatukacıdan takatukalatmadan geri getir.
"Take these takatukas to the takatuka maker. If the takatuka maker won't get them takatuka'd, bring them back without having them takatuka'd."
Takatuka means nothing in particular. The fun is in all the endings piled onto one word.

How to play with tongue twisters at home

• Slow, then fast. Say the line word by word and clap the beat, then at normal speed, then as fast as you can.
• Take turns. One try each; stumble and pass it on. Grown-ups stumble too.
• Record a grandparent. On a video call, ask a grandparent for their favorite tekerleme, once slowly and once fast. Their version may differ, which is part of the fun.
• Keep a family list. Write each one you collect in a notebook, with the name of who said it.

The letters that trip everyone up

• ş is "sh": şişe, bottle, sounds like "shee-sheh".
• ç is "ch": çay, tea, sounds like "chai".
• The dotless ı is roughly the "e" in "the", as in kırk, forty.
• ğ is not a "g". It mostly stretches the vowel before it, so yoğurt sounds like "yo-urt".

Getting a sound wrong is fine: in a tongue twister, everyone does.

Tongue twister games for bedtime and car rides

• Whisper round (bedtime). Lights low, whisper one easy twister, slower each time, until it is almost silent.
• Twister relay (car). Each person says the same line, a little faster each time. Whoever stumbles picks the next one.
• Red or black. Draw a playing card: red means say it slowly, black means fast, and a joker means a silly voice.
• Corner game. Say Şu köşe yaz köşesi while pointing to one corner, then another, then the middle, faster each round.

For quieter evenings, see Turkish lullabies (ninni) and Turkish bedtime stories; for short daily habits, Turkish for toddlers at home.

Word play picks from Roots & Talks

A story about tongues. In The Colour of My Tongue / Dilimin Rengi, Dino and Ela discover that every Turkish word has its own colour: a story about first words, feeling shy to speak and the courage to try. An 11-page illustrated PDF in Turkish and English, plus two short MP3s, one in each language.

For the car. In Ela and the Lost Word / Ela ve Kayıp Kelime, for ages 4 to 8, Ela and her friends look for a lost word: merhaba, simit, saklambaç and more. The Turkish listen-and-repeat version has pauses to say the words out loud.

For red or black. The All the Characters Together Poker Playing Cards: 52 cards and 2 jokers, with the whole Roots & Talks gang on the back of every card.

For the family list. The Bilingual & Proud Spiral Notebook has 118 ruled pages and a cover that says Çift dilli ve gururlu, "bilingual and proud".

More stories are in the E-Books & Audio Stories collection, and short Turkish word games are on our games page.

Say it again, faster

A tekerleme needs no perfect Turkish, only one line, a few people and a little nerve. Start with the eagle and the branch, ask a grandparent for theirs, and see who can get through takatuka without laughing. For more Turkish phrases, see Turkish proverbs with English translation and what these Turkish sayings mean.