Back in February, I mentioned that for a presentation in my German class, I talked about the history of the Italian language, and how Italian is related to German.

My presentation was given in German, of course, and since it was an oral presentation, I didn’t ever write it all down in German. Instead, I presented it to the class using my photos to illustrate the story … which I presented in the form of a fairy tale. Since some of you were curious as to what I did, it’s been on my list to jot it all down in English and post it.

So, I finally sat down at a cafe today and wrote out a version of my frog fairy tale in English. I’ve illustrated it with the same photos and charts I used in my original presentation, although in the presentation several photos were repeated over and over, which mostly isn’t the case in the English version. Also, just like Wilhelm Grimm did in the subsequent editions of the Grimm Brothers’ stories, I found myself adding a few more details to the original story. In particular, I added a plot device by which young Jacob, the hero of the story, is able to get quickly from one city in Italy to another. It was curious – when I originally gave the presentation, people were distracted not by the idea of a witch, not by the idea of a curse that changed people into frogs, and not by statues that talk in riddles. No, what people questioned was the idea that a person could get very quickly between cities in Italy. So, I’ve tried to fix that problem in this version. 😉

BTW, the cafe I went to today was at the end of a street called Froschgasse, “Frog street”, here in Tübingen. It seemed appropriate.

Hope you enjoy the story, which you can download as a pdf file here.