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Reader question: Please explain “a tongue-twister of a dispute”? Tongue-twister? My comments: If a dispute is described as a tongue-twister, it’s a difficult one to describe, and hence perhaps a very tricky problem to solve. A tongue twister, you see, is just something that’s difficult to pronounce, as though one has to twist (as in the “twists and turns” of a country road or a movie plot) one’s tongue in order to sound properly. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former body builder for example, has a heck of a body with a tongue twister of a name to boot. I dare guess not many people dare mess with someone with a name like that. Perhaps he should next run for the White House, having been made Governor of California. For another example, I always thought Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights byEmilyBronte is a tongue twister of a name for the young Chinese English learner to cope with, as well as is Thrush Cross Grange, the name of Edgar Linton’s residence. Daunted by these names and others, many a young reader has not been able to finish the book, and a wonderful it is, too. The English language as a whole, you may argue, is a tongue twister. My English teacher used to ask us to say aloud “How, Now, Brown, Cow” and the whole class learned what the word “mouthful” meant, or felt, to be exact. Comfortingly, though, the English say the same thing about the Chinese language – most difficult, says one and, indeed, say all. | 
