Liguria is not only a region in Italy, but also the name of a text used for speech training in Russia. You can find the entire text here – it’s way too long to insert in our story. However, if you've read our previous article on tongue-twisters, you will probably recognize some of its bits. Here’s how it starts:
В четве́рг четвёртого числа́ в четы́ре с че́твертью часа́
[V chetvérg chetvyortogo chislá v chetýre s chétvert'yu chasá]
лигури́йский регулиро́вщик регули́ровал в Лигу́рии.
[liguríjskij reguliróvshchik regulíroval v Ligúrii.]
Но три́дцать три корабля́ лави́ровали, лави́ровали,
[No trídcat' tri korablyá lavírovali, lavírovali,]
да так и не вы́лавировали.
[da tak i ne výlavirovali.]
Translation: On Tuesday the 4th, at quarter past four,
A Ligurian traffic controller controlled traffic in Liguria.
But thirty-three ships had been maneuvering and maneuvering
but weren’t able to “maneuver out.”
As you might’ve guessed, it’s not quite fair to call it a tongue-twister, as it is actually a sequence of them – 40 to be exact, both popular and rare. This not only makes it impressively lengthy, but also a valuable collection of oral folklore. It’s put together somewhat smoothly, and yet as a whole, the text doesn’t make much sense:
О Кла́ре с Ка́рлом во мра́ке все ра́ки шуме́ли в дра́ке.
[O Kláre s Kárlom vo mráke vse ráki shuméli v dráke.]
Вот и не до бомбарди́ра вора́м бы́ло…
[Vot i ne do bombardíra vorám býlo…]
Translation: All crayfish were making noise in the dark while fighting about Klara and Karl,
So the thieves didn’t have time for the bombardier…
If you’re learning Russian, you probably struggle with getting word stresses right. Don’t overthink it, as it is not rare for native speakers to have problems with that, too. The requirement to stress the words correctly is one of the things that makes pronunciation of Liguria even more complex. This might be especially tricky to do in rare words barely used today, such as пономáрь (ponomár’ – a sexton) and вахмистр (vakhmístr – a sergeant major).
If you’re feeling brave, you can give Liguria a try yourself. You should probably start by approaching it line by line: read it, make sense of all the words, then pronounce them while paying attention to word stresses. Otherwise, simply check out mind-blowing examples of the entire text of Liguria as read out by TV anchors, such as this one:
