Nearest-neighbor interactions and the physical content of Fritzsch mass matrices

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Abstract
We show that in the standard model with fewer than five generations, starting with arbitrary Yukawa couplings, it is always possible to find a weak basis where the quark mass matrices have the nearest-neighbor interaction form. Therefore, for three or four generations, the zeros of the Fritzsch mass matrices are not a contrived feature of the Fritzsch Ansatz, but just a special choice of weak basis.