13.2203, Sum: Counting-out Rhymes
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LINGUIST List: Vol-13-2203. Sat Aug 31 2002. ISSN: 1068-4875.
Subject: 13.2203, Sum: Counting-out Rhymes
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1)
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 11:38:43 +0200
From: Andy Arleo <aarleo at club-internet.fr>
Subject: counting-out rhymes
-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 11:38:43 +0200
From: Andy Arleo <aarleo at club-internet.fr>
Subject: counting-out rhymes
In July (Linguist 13.1969) I posted a query on counting-out rhymes, i.e.
children's rhymes used to designate, usually through elimination, a
central player in games like tag or hide and seek.
I wish to thank the following people for providing information: Marc
Armitage, Laurie Bauer, Barbara Boock, David Gil, Andreas Dufter, Steve
Hewitt, Dick Hudson, Michael Johnstone, Marianne Krause, Johanna Laakso,
Patrizia Noel, Rudolf Reinelt, Bart van der Veer, Catherine Walter,
Tomasz Wisniewski, Ghil`ad Zuckermann.
The replies (see below) concern the following languages: Breton, Dutch,
Finnish, German, Hungarian, Israeli, Japanese (for the game
"Jan-Ken-Pon", Stone, Scissors, Paper) and Polish. They are classified
first in alphabetical order according to language. This is followed by
replies with general information and references.
Andy Arleo
-BRETON (Steve Hewitt, steve.hewitt at noos.fr):
Dans le Trégor (nord-est du domaine bretonnant), on disait:
La vi, la va,
An hini n-eo ked kwached,
Ma karje 'oa!
"La vie, la va" [sans sens en breton]
Celui qui n'est pas caché,
S'il le voulait, il le serait!
Je ne connais pas davantage.
Steve Hewitt
Ar Veroudeg 30 rue Charles Baudelaire
Ar C'houerc'had 75012 PARIS
22420 PLOUARED
- DUTCH
De: "Bart van der Veer" <b.vanderveer at hivt.ha.be>
I don't know if you're interested in a Dutch example, but here is one
anyway:
(syllables separated by a dot):
Ie.ne mie.ne mut.te
nonsense words
Tien pond grut.ten
ten pound gruau PL (= French gloss, don't know the English word)
Ie.ne mie.ne mut.te (not always repeated)
Tien pond kaas
ten pound cheese
Ie.ne mie.ne mut.te (not always repeated)
is de baas
is the boss
Language: Dutch
Country: Holland (and apparently also Flanders, Belgium, see first link
below)
Words for counting-out-rhyme in Dutch: aftelrijmpje, aftelliedje,
aftelversje (Source: Van Dale Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal)
Name of central player: baas 'boss' => (s)he is the boss, the leader
Variants:
http://www.mamalisa.com/world/belgium.html
http://www.laukart.de/multisite/songbook/dutch.php#GlossI
http://www.ismennt.is/vefir/leikir/urtalnGV2.html
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/R.Hiddinga/kids/iene.htm
Success,
Bart van der Veer
Hoger Instituut voor Vertalers en Tolken,
Department of Italian
Antwerpen
http://www.hivt.be/italiaans
-FINNISH (johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at):
Finnish counting-out rhymes have been studied at least by the recently
deceased Leea Virtanen in her classic work also available in English:
Children's lore. [Helsinki] : Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura [=
Finnish Literature Society, http://www.finlit.fi/], 1978. (Studia
Fennica, ISSN 0085-6835 ; 22) ISBN 951-717-148-X (pb.). But I am sure
that other folklorists have worked on this theme as well - I would
advise you to contact the people at the Finnish Literature Society,
where there are voluminous archives as well. I would not be surprised if
Estonian colleagues have done similar studies - try looking at
http://haldjas.folklore.ee/. They even have online archives for some
folklore collections in Estonia, perhaps there might be counting-out
rhymes there as well. In Finland, I managed to find one link page with
lots of sources to children's lore; there are online rhyme collections
there as well (
http://www.suomi24.fi/c/Koti_ja_perhe/Lapset_ja_nuoret/Pienet_lapset/Leikit_ja_sadut/Runot_ja_lorut/
).
As far as I know (from my own experience), Finnish counting-out rhymes
are of two types. Some are clearly understandable and may be quite
modern (obviously fairly recently coined), such as
Auto ajoi kilparataa,
mittari näytti kahtasataa,
yksi pyörä putosi POIS.
[The car drove on the course,
the speedometer showed two hundred,
one wheel fell OFF.]
or
Maalari maalasi taloa,
sinistä ja punaista,
illan tullen sanoi hän:
nyt minä lähden tästä talosta POIS.
[The painter painted a house
blue and red,
when the evening came, he said:
now I'm going AWAY from this house.]
The second type is completely nonsensical (or folk-etymological), based
on some foreign models. A good example which I learnt in my childhood (I
still remember how I wondered at the nonsensical words with a few
interpretable but out-of-place ones in between):
Prum prum prullaa,
reka reka rellaa,
seisastoppa sekalo.
Sä varso ny, sä varso ny ['you give birth to a foal now'??].
Ahves tiikasta kallista ['expensive'] röömää,
mesikämmen arestista ['the honey-palm (the bear) from the arrest']
röskämä rös!
Later, when I discovered Virtanen's book, I was delighted to find out
that this rhyme represents a distortion of a Swedish one which must have
sounded like
Bro, bro, bröllop, [?'Bridge, bridge, wedding']
kejsarn står på sitt höga slott ['the emperor stands in his high
palace'],
så vit som snö, så svart som död ['as white as snow, as black as
death'].
Varför är en soldat bättre än en herreman? ['Why is a soldier better
than a gentleman?']
Den som kommer allra sist är döden. ['The one who comes as the very last
is the death'].
(According to Virtanen, there is a real translation of this rhyme as
well in Finnish children's lore (Huraa huraa häitä, / keisari seisoo
palatsissaan...). It was used in a game of tag, where the person
selected with this rhyme was called "the death", and players report
being really afraid of "becoming the death".)
A similar story of another nonsensical counting-out-rhyme, now with a
German model, is told by Osmo Ikola in the journal "Virittäjä" (Entten
tentten teelikamentten: Erään lastenlorun arvoitus. - Virittäjä, Vol.
106 (1/2002); German abstract at
http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/kks/virittaja/hakemistot/jutut/ikola1_2002.html
).
The most usual Finnish word for "counting-out rhyme" is "leikkiloru"
(or, perhaps, "leikkiluku") - "leikki" means 'children's game', "loru"
is a descriptive word with connotations to "making a sound like water
being poured", "blabbering", something meaningless or worthless. It
cannot be called "runo" (poem), which denotes something too "serious",
nor "riimi" (rhyme), because this children's lore need not be rhymed.
(Older Finnish folk poetry was not rhymed but alliterating; more recent
genres of folk and literary poetry use rhymes, but because of the
typological character of Finnish this is often structurally problematic,
leads to a naïve repetition of a few rhyming suffixes or to a misuse of
the (too) few good rhyme words, which means that modern "serious" poetry
after World War II has abandoned the use of rhymes. They are used almost
exclusively in the lyrics of popular music and other more popular
genres.)
As for the metrics of the Finnish counting-out rhymes, the examples I
know of are mostly trochaic(-dactylic) or the like (the octosyllabic
trochaic type suits best with the first-syllable-stress and canonical
stem disyllabicity of Finnish), sometimes with the last line (and the
crucial word for 'out') strongly accented:
AU-to | A-joi | KIL-pa- | RA-taa |
MIT-ta-ri | NÄYT-ti | KAH-ta-| SA-taa |
YK-si | PYÖ-rä | PUTO-si | POIS !
Just now, I cannot think of any general terms for "to count out" or "It"
in Finnish. (The central player in a chasing game is called with the
same word that is used for the game, and these words vary dialectally.)
- FINNISH (2):
"Marianne Krause" <marianne.krause at meigainnovations.com>
Finnish is a Fenno-Ugric language. Here are some of our popular c-o-r's:
http://digilander.libero.it/cfgames2000/rhymes.html (One version of the
most
popular one: Entten tentten. The words, for the most part make as much
sense
as Supercalifragilisticexpiallydocious, or however you spell it!) Here's
another version of the same rhyme:
Entten tentten teelika mentten,
hissun kissun vaapula vissun,
eelin keelin plot, viipula vaapula vot,
Eskon saum, pium paum,
nyt mä lähden tästä pelistä pois. (Now I'm going to quit this game)
Puh pah pelistä pois! Puh pah, quit this game!)
And another version of the same:
ENTTEN TENTTEN TEELIKA MENTTEN
HISSUN KISSUN VAAPULA VISSUN
EELIN KEELIN KLOT
VIIPULA VAAPULA VOT
ESKON SAUN
PIUN PAUN
EEMELI VASTASI: NYT POIS! (Emil anwered: now leave!)
And yet another, longer version, that combines many other rhymes into
one
long rhyme:
Auto ajoi kilparataa (A car raced on the track)
mittari näytti kahtasataa (the meter says two hundred)
yksi pyörä putosi pois (one wheel fell off)
puh pah pelistä pois. (puh pah, off the game)
Entten tentten teelika mentten
Hissun kissun vaapula vissun
Eelin keelin klot
Viipula vaapula vot
Eskon saun piiun paaun
Nyt mä lähden tästä pelistä pois (now I'm going to quit this game)
Puh pah pelistä pois. (puh pah, leave this game)
Kissa hyppäs puuhun (The cat leaped to the tree)
Pisti nakin suuhun (put a sausage in his/her mouth)
Nakki meni poikki (the sausage broke in two)
Kissa pakoon loikki. (the cat escaped / ran away)
Entten tentten teelika mentten
Viisaat sukset lammet loo (THIS MAKES NO OR LITTLE SENSE:)Wise skies
ponds
Akka putos avantoon (The hag fell into a hole in the ice)
Ukko veti sen sieltä pois (the old man dragged her up)
Puh pah pelistä pois. (puh pah quit the game)
Elli keitti vellii(Elli (A WOMAN'S NAME) was cooking
Antoi Matin maistaa
Matti kaasi lattialle
Elli pyyhki pois
Puh pah pelistä pois.
A,B,C,kissa kävelee
tikapuita pitkin taivaaseen
Kurkistaa vilkuttaa
takaperin alas tulla tapsuttaa
Maalari maalas taloa
Sinistä ja punaista
Illan tullen sanoi hän
Nyt mä lähden tästä pelistä pois
Puh pah pelistä pois.
Here's the more poular version of the rhyme above: (This well-known
version
is not a c-o-r.)
ABC
A, B, C, kissa kävelee,
tikapuita pitkin taivaaseen.
Tikapuut katkes,
kissan maha ratkes.
Omena oo
Omena oo, ompom poo,
pila pala pelistä pois.
Nalle karhu nalle karhu
Mene sisälle
Nosta tassusi pyöri ympäri
Niiaa kumarra potkaise kiljaise karjaise
Koske käsi maahan
Syö hunajaa
Mene pois.
Apinakapina
APINA KAPINA KIIPESI PUUHUN,
PUTOSI SIELTÄ POLIISIN SUUHUN,
POLIISI LUULI SITÄ MAKKARAKSI
JA PURAISI PALAN POIS!
Autoloru
Auto ajo kilparataa,
mittari näytti viittäsataa.
Yksi pyörä putosi pois.
This one is in Swedish, that 6% of the Finns speak as their native
language:
Olle dolle dof
Olle dolle dof,
kincke lade kof,
koffe lade, kincke lade,
olle dolle dof.
(Not sure of the correct spolling, though.)
All rhymes above are common in Finland. The most used one is Entten
tentten. As I mentioned, it is not Finnish, but incomprihensible
jargon. The only
words that mean something are Pois = away, out Vastasi = replied
Words for c-o-r's: Not commonly used and a quick gallup at my office
showed, that nobody knew the word: Lukuloru, where luku means number
and loru means nurseryrhyme, not necessarily with real rhymes.
"It" is somewhat difficult to translate into Finnish. We tent to say
"the one that becomes" or "is" (actually the verb is "to stay"). In
Finnish: Se, joka jää. (se = it ,s/he; joka = that; jää = stays,
becomes)
In some games It is called "hippa", that cannot be translated, I
think. A hippa is found in games where one has to catch or chase one
or more oter
players. Kiinniottaja = cather, chaser; polttaja = burner (in a game
called Polttopallo, where one "burns" other players avoiding the ball
in a circle)...
It seems both terms are difficult; there is no good word for eiter. If
the game suggests a word for It, it will gladly be deployed. (Such as
burner in Burning Ball, Polttopallo)
I'm sorry I can't refer to any studies. The only thing I can say is
that
there seems to be one rhyme above all, in all classes and groups;
Entten
tentten. Some of the words seem to originate in Swedish, but some
words sound more Finnish.
- GERMAN (Barbara Boock james at UB.UNI-FREIBURG.DE):
here is my - very short - answer:
1) german
2) Bundesrepublik Deutschland, besides all German-speaking people all
over
the world
3) "Abzählvers" "Abzählreim" "abzählen" "auszählen" which mean about the
same as the English words you mentioned. Besides, there exist
dialect-words I cannot write all down 4) the one who has to seek or to
chase after all the others are counted out is: "dran" or "muss" but
there is no special name for him or her. 5) There exist lots of these
counting out rhymes and they are different in the different areas of
Germany. I just don't have the time to name you a
greater number. 6) Dass ihr euch ja nich' schietig macht!111 Lieder
und Spiele von Hamburger Straßen und Höfen, hrsg., aufgezeichnet und
mit Noten vers. von Peter Unbehauen. Hamburg, Dölling und Galitz,
1999. 232 S. : zahlr. Ill., Noten (Hinz-&-Kunzt-Buch)ISBN
3-930802-99-6 + Cd - contains more songs then counting-out rhymes An
old edition, reprinted is: Kinderlieder, Reime, Sprüche und
Abzählverse, gesammelt und hrsg. von Karl Simrock. (Repr.)
Welsermühl, Borowsky,ca. 1977. 350 S. : Ill. - There will be a lot of
collections mentioned in our annotated bibliography of children
songbooks in our archive. The last point I want to leave out because
I am not so very familiar with the linguistic studies in this field.
Yours Barbara Boock
Barbara Boock, Bibliothekarin
Deutsches Volksliedarchiv
- Arbeitsstelle für internationale Volksliedforschung
Silberbachstr. 13
D 79100 Freiburg
Tel (49) 761 70 50 30
Durchwahl (49) 761 70 50 314
Fax (49) 761 70 50 328
- HUNGARIAN (Michael Johnstone mjj1000 at hermes.cam.ac.uk):
I'd heard of a Hungarian counting-out rhyme beginning Ecc-Pecc, so I
did a websearch for it and found eight of them at
http://www.17cscs.org/kiszamolok.html
On this website at least they're called kiszámolók, which means
'out-counters'. Here's Ecc-Pecc with my literal translation:
Ecc, pecc, kimehetsz,
Holnapután bejöhetsz,
Cérnára, cinegére,
Ugorj cica az egérre,
Fuss!
Ecc, pecc, you can go out,
The day after tomorrow you can come in,
Onto thread, onto titmouse,
Jump, puss, onto the mouse,
Run!
(ecc and etsz are both pronounced [Etts].)
I don't know anything about the context of use etc., but it might be
worth
chasing some Hungarians about it! The www.17cscs.org website's also got
examples of 'battle-cries' (csatakiáltások). The site belongs to the
17th
Könyves Kálmán Scout Troup, Hollywood, California, by the way.
There's also a tune for Ecc-pecc at:
http://www.mek.iif.hu/porta/szint/egyeb/kotta/gydalok/html/dalok.htm#a19
- ISRAELI (Ghil`ad ZUCKERMANN gz208 at cam.ac.uk):
IN ISRAELI
en den dino
sof al hakatino
sof al hakati kato
elik belik bom
bom bom bom
ptakh et haalbom
sham tire oti
vetikakh oti
akhat shtayim shalosh arba khamesh
- JAPANESE (Rudolf Reinelt reinelt at ll.ehime-u.ac.jp)
What about Japanese Jan - Ken - Pon (translated as Stone - scissors -
paper)? There should be some literature about this, but probably very
little in English.
The following is a google search for this: (Items: Stone Scissor Paper)
(note A. Arleo: unfortunately the URLs are have become unreadable)
- POLISH (tomasz wisniewski tomwisn at yahoo.com):
I can't do much for your research but you might be
interested in these little examples from Polish. I
used them in kindergarten about 1977 (Cracow, Poland,
Standard Colloquial), they are called wyliczanki (sg.
wyliczanka fem. liczyc' to count, wy- sort of "out",
-an- usually makes adjectives and participles
wyliczany-enumerated, calculated, -k- sometimes
diminutive sometimes nominal formant). Wyliczac is
the verb, acute on c (then its palatal tch, cz is a
hard maybe alveolar tch, y backed i). I don't know if
girls used the same ones but probably they did.
Ene due rabe
Zjad³ Tadeusz zabe (dot over z)
Zaba Tadeusza w brzuchu mu sie rusza
Raz dwa trzy
Gonisz ty
(Ene Due Rabe Tadeusz ate a frog, the frog (ate)
Tadeusz, it moves in his belly, 1 2 3 YOU chase, ty
means you, its the "it" of English rhymes)
Ene due rabe
Chinczyk zlapal (both l's crossed) zabe
a zaba Chinczyka
Co z tego wynika
Raz dwa trzy
Bedziesz ty
(E.D.R. a Chinaman caught a frog, the frog (caught)
the Chinaman, what comes out of it? 1 2 3 it'll be
you, or literally you will be)
FInally here's an interesting almost bilingual rhyme:
Siedzia³a baba na sto³eczku (crossed ³ if you
processor doesn't read these signs)
liczy³a dzieci po niemiecku
ein zwei drei
wy-pie-przaj
(An old women sat on a stool, she counted children in
German, ein zwei drei, you're out; but the one out is
actually chosen, this is rather a vulgar word, the
English f. word plus "out" could be suggested, but so
that the speaker doesn't curse, he choses to say the
beginning wypie...and end it to sound like the word
"to pepper", this it the etymology, it means get out).
GENERAL INFORMATION AND REFERENCES
Dick Hudson <dick at linguistics.ucl.ac.uk>
I broadcast a somewhat similar query to the Linguist list a year ago
and
got quite a useful bibliography. My query was about playground
language in general. Here's a copy of my bibliography - I hope it's
useful and I wish you success with your project. It's not a subject I
myself have done any
research on, but I can see why it's interesting.
- "Marc Armitage" <marc.armitage at playpeople.karoo.co.uk>
Have you considered adding 'End, or Tag rhyme' to your list of
questions
relating to children's counting out rhymes.
In my experience, the standard rhyme that children add to the end of
most of the local counting out rhymes they use (ie, the end-rhyme,
which makes it harder to 'cheat' in the elimination) can be a usuful
way of estimating the geographical location of the children using it.
It would appear that children will apply their own version of the end
rhyme to any existing rhyme in use - for example, children in the Isle
of Axholme area of Lincolnshire in the UK would end the rhyme:
"Mickey Mouse built a house
How many bricks did he use?
[6]
1-2-3-4-5-6
That mean's you are not it - all god's words are true"
Wheras the same rhyme in Hull East Yorkshire would end:
"Mickey Mouse built a house
How many bricks did he use?
[6]
1-2-3-4-5-6
That mean's that you are not it for making up this stupid game"
Thing is, almost all children in the Isle use their version of the
end-rhyme, and almost all children in Hull use theirs.
Hope this is useful.
Marc Armitage, for
PLAYPEOPLE - Play Development, Education, Training & Research
'taking play seriously'
Centre 88
Saner Street
Anlaby Road
HULL HU3 2TR
- "Catherine Walter" <cwalter at place-farm.demon.co.uk>
You will find some references in
Cook, Guy. 2000. Language Play, Language Learning. Oxford: OUP.
laurie.bauer at vuw.ac.nz:
You can find material on counting-out rhymes in New Zealand at our
web-site
for the Language in the Playgorund project,
<http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/lip/
>.
Laurie
Laurie Bauer
Professor of Linguistics
School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: +64 4 463 5619
Fax: +64 4 463 5604
e-mail: laurie.bauer at vuw.ac.nz
www http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals
- David Gil <gil at eva.mpg.de>
Société: MPI EVA
I did quite a bit of work on the metrics of nursery rhymes, and a few of
them qualify as counting-out rhymes. Since I'm now travelling in the
field, I don't have access to my own papers, but I suggest you check the
following:
Stein, David and David Gil (1980) "Prosodic Structures and Prosodic
Markers", Theoretical Linguistics 7:173-240.
If my memory serves me correctly, the above article contains
counting-out rhymes in Rumanian, and Hebrew. However, if it turns out
that I'm wrong, I could perhaps dig the data up for you; I may also have
some data from Tagalog.
David Gil
Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Inselstrasse 22, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
Telephone: 49-341-9952321
Fax: 49-341-9952119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage: http://monolith.eva.mpg.de/~gil/
- dufter at romanistik.uni-muenchen.de
suite à votre demande sur LINGUIST List 13.1969, je me permets de vous
envoyer ci-joint, en annexe, un article qui vient de paraître dans:
Restle, David/Zaefferer, Dietmar (eds.) (2002):
Sounds and Systems. Studies in Structure and Change. A Festschrift for
Theo Vennemann. (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 141.)
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Il est consacré aux comptines dans la perspective de la phonologie
comparative. La petite collection de vers enfantins que vous trouverez
dedans
ne se veut pas représentative - nous en sommes encore loin de ce but ! -
et n'est pas non plus restreint aux comptines numériques.
Il s'agit plutôt d'une etude à nature exploratoire.
Néanmoins, si vous aviez d'autres sources bibliographiques, je vous
serais
reconnaissant de me les indiquer. Le sujet semble passionnant, c'est sûr
....
Cordialement,
Andreas Dufter
Dr. des. Andreas Dufter
Universität München
Institut für Romanische Philologie
http://www.romanistik.uni-muenchen.de/dufter.htm
- Patrizia Noel <pnoel at gmx.de>
together with two colleagues, Katrin Lindner and Andreas Dufter, I
recently published an article on the metrics of nursery rhymes in the
languages of the world in a festschrift for Theo Vennemann on his 65th
birthday (Mouton de Gruyter, 2002). If you cannot get hold of a copy,
I can send you the article when I come back to Munich in two weeks.
Best regards,
Patrizia Noel
Institut für deutsche Philologie
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
Schellingstr. 3
80799 München
Germany
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