EWE!

The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick

What’s so funny about this? I was a little nervous about doing the cartoon for this tongue twister because, as you know, I don’t actually draw the cartoons. I assemble them from a site with thousands a characters, settings and props and then I have to combine them. There are so many racial and ethnic stereotypes out there that I didn’t want to be offensive. I did find the two characters you see to be somewhat acceptable. One is actually supposed to be a biblical shepherd but his clothes pass. The other guy is more generic Arab but his head covering isn’t really accurate. Nevertheless, the tongue twister itself is so good that I think it outweighs the flaws of the cartoon. Let’s talk about the word s-h-e-i-k. In English, it’s pronounced “sheik” as if it had two EE’s, to rhyme with sheep. In Arabic it’s sheik” and it rhymes with shake. To make the tongue twister work, we have to use the English pronunciation. Also note the two different uses of