German Tongue Twister: Fischers Fritze…

Title:

German Tongue Twister (Tongue Breaker in German): Fischers Fritze fischt frische Fische; Frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritze

General Information about the Item:

  • Oral tradition: tongue breaker
  • Language: German
  • Country of Origin: Rostock
  • Informant: Marie-Luise Kieseler
  • Date Collected: October 26, 2018

Informant Data:

Marie-Luise Kieseler and her family are from Rostock, Germany where she grew up and spent most of her life. Now, Marie is twenty seven years old, is a graduate student at Dartmouth College, and conducts Neuroscience research on facial perception and animal cognition. Marie loves to be outside, and she has enjoyed meeting a lot of different people from various backgrounds and ages at Dartmouth. She is interested in learning about unique cultural customs, so she was pleased to share information about her own culture.

Contextual data:

In Germany, Marie reflected on the seriousness of her childhood and the pertinence of a solid educational background. The tongue twisters are used for educational purposes to help with pronunciation of difficult words and sounds, and served as a type of practice for children to master certain aspects of the language. Therefore, she remembers her parents teaching her tongue breakers at a young age to solidify her pronunciation and diction, so that her speech was pristine. In addition to their educational purpose, tongue breakers were also a form of entertainment. Marie remembers learning tongue breakers from her relatives and then learning from and teaching her friends at school. It was a way for her to bond with the other students, make new friends, and even impress other boys, because they were also used as a determining factor for who was the most impressive. It became a friendly competition of who could pronounce the most difficult tongue breakers. To this day, she loves tongue breakers, and as she has learned english, she has enjoyed mastering english tongue breakers as well.

Item:

Orally transmitted tongue twister:

Fischers Fritze fischt frische Fische; Frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritze.

Translation:

Fritz, the fisherman’s son, fishes for fresh fish; For fresh fish fishes Fritz, the fisherman’s son

Collector’s Names: Shae Wolfe and Ashley Martinez

Tags/keywords:

  • German
  • Tongue twister
  • Tongue breaker

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