botter b__tə botta virginia.edu ɒ ʌ bronte batter twas ɪ ɔ twisters vowels www.gutenberg.org æ alberts alliteration duffield twister butter whitcomb syllable rhymes jingle opie iona differentiating vowel nursery recitation
betty bought butter but the butter was bitter tongue twister
Betty Botter - wikipedia Betty Botter Jump to : navigation , search Betty Botter Recitation of Betty Botter tongue - twister <Td_colspan="2"> Problems playing this file ? See media help . Betty Botter is a tongue - twister written by Carolyn Wells . It was originally titled `` The Butter Betty Bought . '' By the middle of the 20th century , it had become part of the Mother Goose collection of nursery rhymes . Contents ( hide ) 1 Construction 2 Lyrics 3 Variations 3.1 Bronte Alberts ' Version 3.2 A longer version 3.3 Another version 4 References Construction ( edit ) The construction is based on alliteration , using the repeated two - syllable pattern / ' b__tə ' b__tə ' b__tə / with a range of vowels in the first , stressed syllable . The difficulty is in clearly and consistently differentiating all the vowels from each other . They are almost all short vowels : / æ / batter / e / better - Betty / ɪ / bitter - bit o ' / ɒ / Botter / ʌ / butter with one long vowel / ɔ :/ ' Bought a ' Lyrics ( edit ) When it was first published in `` The Jingle Book '' in 1899 it read : Betty Botta bought a bit of butter ; `` But , '' she said , `` this butter 's bitter ! If I put it in my batter It will make my batter bitter . But a bit o ' better butter Will make my batter better . '' Then she bought a bit o ' butter Better than the bitter butter , Made her bitter batter better . So ' twas better Betty Botta Bought a bit o ' better butter . This is Sam Robertson 's version . Betty Botta bought a bit of bitter butter and she put that bitter butter in her batter and it made her batter bitter so Betty Botta bought a bit of better butter and she put that bit of better butter in her bitter batter and it made her bitter batter better Variations ( edit ) Bronte Alberts ' Version ( edit ) Betty Botter bought a bit of butter But the bit of butter Betty Botter bought was bitter So Betty Botter bought a better bit of butter A longer version ( edit ) Betty Botter bought some butter , but , she said , The 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 . Another version ( edit ) Betty Botter bought some butter . But Betty Botter found her butter bitter . So Betty Botter bought some better butter . A little bit of bitter butter did n't bother Betty . But her better butter better not be bitter ! References ( edit ) ^ Jump up to : `` The Jingle Book by Carolyn Wells '' -- via www.gutenberg.org . Jump up ^ `` A Book of American Humorous Verse '' edited by James Whitcomb Riley , Duffield & Company , New York , 1917 , page 169 , in which Ms. Wells ' authorship and Macmillan 's original copyright is acknowledged . Jump up ^ The Oxford dictionary of nursery rhymes , edited by Iona and Peter Opie , Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press , 1951 ; page 84 - 85 Jump up ^ Smolkin , Laura . `` Betty Botter '' ( PDF ) . virginia.edu . Jump up ^ YouTube video `` Betty Botter '' . Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Betty_Botter&oldid=831876363 '' Categories : Tongue - twisters Hidden categories : Articles with hAudio microformats Talk Contents About Wikipedia Add links This page was last edited on 22 March 2018 , at 16 : 40 . About Wikipedia