Batty Betty Botter's Bitter Butter
Why I torture my clients
If you've ever taken an English pronunciation class, voice lessons, or speech therapy, you've likely encountered Betty Botter and her bitter butter dilemma. When I started delivering pronunciation coaching I was hesitant to use this particular tongue twister, thinking it was cliché and outdated as a tool. But I relented, and, frankly, it is one of the most useful tools in my kit.
Nevertheless, despite its value as a training exercise, many of my clients frequently give me playful eye-rolls when I open Betty Botter. Some of my clients even complain of the risk to matrimonial harmony caused by their continuous repetition of lines from Betty Botter between coaching sessions. So why do I do it?
Betty Botter and her baking bungle
For the uninitiated (or those who've blocked it from memory), here's the tongue twister in full:
Betty Botter bought some butter,
But she said, "This butter's bitter.
If I put it in my batter,
It will make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter
Will make my batter better."
So she bought a bit of butter,
Better than her bitter butter,
And she put it in her batter,
And the batter was not bitter.
So 'twas better Betty Botter
Bought a bit of better butter.
A brief history
Betty Botter's origins are somewhat murky, but it is believed to have first appeared in print in the early 20th century. It's often attributed to Carolyn Wells, who included it in her 1902 book "The Nonsense Anthology" under the title "Betty Botter”.
However, like many pieces of oral tradition, its roots likely extend further back. Similar rhymes focusing on difficult sound combinations have existed in various forms throughout English language history - a tradition that includes other classics like "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" and "She sells seashells by the seashore”.
To be honest, though, I’m not convinced it classifies as a tongue twister in the same way as ‘she sells seashells on the seashore’, for example. I just don’t think it forces the tongue to twist in quite the same way (the tongue’s not even really used for the [b] sound!), but it certainly covers many of the troublesome areas of connected English speech.
Why Betty’s the best
I actually think that many of my clients roll their eyes at the thought of another session with Betty Botter simply because it is boring, not because it is difficult, so I try to avoid overusing it. However, despite its inherent dullness, it is really great for:
Vowel differentiation: The repeated alternation between acoustically similar vowels (/ɪ/, /ɛ/, /æ/, /ʌ/) helps learners discriminate these sounds perceptually and practise producing them correctly.
Mastering the final -er: The natural inclination of many learners of (British) English is to put an exaggerated and rhotic schwa on the end of ‘better’, ‘butter’, ‘batter’ and ‘bitter’, but this creates unnatural sounding speech. The poem is a really good opportunity to practise keeping these final schwas short and flat.
Connected speech: With the bilabial plosives dominating the start of words, and the naturally staccato sounding words, Betty is a really good test of learners’ ability to create the flowing, joined up speech that natural English favours. Many of my clients, particularly those speaking Slavic first languages, naturally emphasise word-initial plosives. This, along with micro-pauses between words, really highlights word boundaries - something we generally want to avoid in effective connected English speech. Practising gentle and short contact between the two lips on the initial /b/ and focusing energy on the following vowel can really help develop fluid and connected speech.
Vocal Agility: Betty Botter builds muscle memory and flexibility in the articulators (tongue, lips, jaw).
Intonation and engaging speech: the very fact that the content of the poem is ‘boring’ gives us a neutral starting point to experiment with intonation and other prosodic speech elements.
Why torture works
Ultimately, the combination of focused practice, the humour in the struggle, and the satisfaction of eventual mastery creates a memorable learning experience. When a student who previously couldn't distinguish between ‘better’ and ‘batter’ finally beats Betty, their confidence soars. The playful frustration becomes a shared joke, and the ‘torture’ transforms into triumph.
So if you want to improve your articulation, don’t use some half-baked tongue twister - you’ll do much better with a bit of Betty Botter’s bitter butter.
