The Fisherman and His Wife
Here are multiple versions of the familiar (or if isn't familiar, read it!) Grimm's fairy tale in different closely related languages. You can probably find more if you try.
There's also a Russian version of the story by Pushkin (search for "СКАЗКА О РЫБАКЕ И РЫБКЕ")
Between all of those one ought to be able to make out what's going on. For extra thrills, try reading one of the languages you don't know.
"Kannitverstan"
Johann Peter Hebel's classic 1809 tale "Kannitverstan" is about the moral reflections that mutual incomprehension can arouse in a young German from Württemberg who is in Amsterdam for the first time (based on a true story dating from 1757) :
Update: Links refreshed, Dutch and Russian added.
2 comments:
There's also a Russian version of the story by Pushkin, but I don't have a link to it.
Here is a collection of poems and fairy tales by Pushkin. The one you refer to is titled СКАЗКА О РЫБАКЕ И РЫБКЕ and can be found about two thirds down the text.
Delurking to say: Thank you! thank you!! I read "Kannitverstan" in German several years ago, and could neither remember where I'd read it nor find it again by chance.
I am amused and fascinated alternatively, sometimes simultaneously, by these packets of erudition. Well done!
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