Looking for an off-beat, unusual way to break the ice or astound and confound your friends? Try writing or
talking backwards! It's a great way to challenge yourself, and it makes even the most mundane thoughts sound
interesting and fun. Talk about a party trick! It takes practice, but the results are worth the effort.
Listen to a professional backwards speaker interview for inspiration!
Think of something interesting to say.
For example, "Watch for sheep in the park." Keep it simple at first. The sentence should be
fairly short, with no commas or long words.
Write it backwards.
In this case, it will read "krap eht ni peehs rof hctaw." There's no need to capitalize when
you write the sentence backwards. In fact, doing so may make it a little harder to read.
Alter the backwards sentence to make it readable.
You can't just write down any word backwards and read it by pronouncing each letter in order. That's
because some letters we don't pronounce separately, but in combination with others, like "ch"
and "sh". The next step after writing the sentence down is to alter it make it readable. So in
this example, "krap eht ni peehs rof hctaw," should be changed to "krap eth ni peesh rof
chtaw."
Read it aloud.
Don't worry about inflection and tone. Just focus on pronouncing the strange words how you intuitively
think they look like they're pronounced.
Read backwards without writing.
The next step is to start practicing reading things backwards before writing them backwards. Find a book
near you that has simple language and vocabulary. Try reading some sentences out of it in reverse by
looking at the last letter in the last word first, and reading from right to left.
The tricky part about this is learning to make the appropriate edits when it comes to sounds
like "wh" and "ch" on the fly. So when you see a word like "charge,"
you don't try to say "egrahc," you say "egrach."
Speak backwards from your head.
The final step is to start practicing saying things backwards without reading them or writing them down
first. Think of a simple sentence. Start with the last word in the sentence, and pronounce it
starting with the last letter, going backwards. Visualize the words backward in your head if it
helps.
