Peter Piper
| "Peter Piper" | |
|---|---|
| File:Peter piper1836.jpg Illustration from Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation (1836 American ed.) | |
| Nursery rhyme | |
| Published | 1813 |
"Peter Piper" is an English-language nursery rhyme and well-known alliteration tongue-twister. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19745.[1]
Lyrics
[edit | edit source]The traditional version, as published in John Harris' Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation in 1813, is:
- Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
- A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
- If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
- Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?[2]
A common modern version is:
- Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
- If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
- How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick
- if he picked a peck of pickled peppers?[citation needed]
A "peck" is a unit of dry volume, with the imperial peck equivalent to a quarter of a bushel. The term is, however, now obsolete in British English.
Origins
[edit | edit source]The earliest published version of this tongue-twister was in Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation, by John Harris (1756–1846), issued in London in 1813. The book includes a one-name tongue-twister for each letter of the alphabet in the same style. However, the rhyme was apparently known at least a generation earlier.[3] Some authors have identified the subject of the rhyme as Pierre Poivre, an eighteenth‑century French horticulturalist and government administrator of Mauritius, who once investigated the Seychelles' potential for spice cultivation.[4][5]
Peter Piper Principle
[edit | edit source]The Peter Piper Principle is a cognitive error that people make, where they tend to confuse two words that resemble each other; in particular, when the first letter(s) are the same. Studies have shown that this applies when people confuse the names of other people (although other tendencies also apply).[6][7]
Novelists are well aware of the peril of giving two characters names that start with the same letter, because readers have a tendency to get them confused.[8][9] Names of medications also tend to be confused when they start with the same few letters.[10]
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ H. Carpenter and M. Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 408.
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
External links
[edit | edit source]Lua error in mw.title.lua at line 392: bad argument #2 to 'title.new' (unrecognized namespace name 'Portal').
- Text of Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation at Project Gutenberg
- File:Speaker Icon.svg Peter Piper public domain audiobook at LibriVox
