IS THERE still a place for proverbs in the language of the twenty-first century? When I began to compile this book, I asked several people what they thought of proverbs, and encountered a surprising number of negative reactions. One widely held view maintains that proverbs are clichéd expressions, used by those who have not bothered to think clearly. Another sees them as out of date, a reflection of a bygone age. One person – an Internet geek – told me that he ‘wouldn’t be seen dead using one’, citing ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ as a case in point.

There is a curious double-think operating. I later heard that same geek joking with some colleagues about the poor military intelligence that had led a certain government to make some bad decisions. ‘Garbage in, garbage out’, said the geek. The phrase originated in his IT world: if invalid data (garbage) is entered into a system, the output will also be invalid. During the 1990s, the expression came to be applied to an increasingly varied range of situations. Within a decade, it had taken on proverbial status. My anti-proverbial geek was using a proverb without realizing it.

Within a few days of that first enquiry, I heard several people dropping proverbs, or fragments of proverbs, into their conversations. ‘Needs must’, said one. ‘Ask a silly question’, said another. ‘People in glass houses’, said a third. None of them bothered to complete the well-known proverbs. They were taken for granted.

People may not quote proverbs in full as much as they used to, or treat them with the high respect of an earlier age, but they certainly allude to them. Anyone looking out for proverbs in everyday situations would quickly be able to add to the following brief selection:

A university department that was being axed advertised its farewell party under the banner headline: ‘Come and Hear the Fat Lady Sing’.

A TV comedian made a risqué joke based on ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’.

A US motel trying to attract custom to the claimed comfort of its facilities had a sign outside: ‘The early bird only gets the worm’.

A TV comedy programme called itself ‘Birds of a Feather’.

Proverbs continue to fascinate people. Here is a test anyone can do. Choose one of the less familiar proverbs from this book, drop it into a conversation, and see what happens. My favourite is the Irish proverb Never bolt your door with a boiled carrot. There is invariably an interesting discussion about the proverb’s origins and use. And one proverb then reminds someone of another. It is a bit like punning: when one person makes a pun, others try to do better. Puns are batted back and forth. Some linguists have called this phenomenon ‘ping-pong punning’. There is ping-pong proverbing too. Proverb exchanges and contests have a literary history. You will find one in Shakespeare.

There is something about the proverbs associated with other cultures that allows them to evade the kind of criticism we level at our own native expressions. Whatever else we might say about the following, we would not for one moment call them clichés.

A coconut shell full of water is a sea to an ant (ZANZIBAR)

Don’t call the alligator a big-mouth till you have crossed the river (BELIZE)

An untouched drum does not speak (LIBERIA)

Do not try to borrow combs from shaven monks (CHINA)

Such proverbs do more than express a general truth or universal belief. Each in its own way adds a tiny bit more to our understanding of the world’s linguistic and cultural diversity, and thus helps us grasp more fully what it means to be human.

It is a commonplace of comparative linguistics that every language expresses a unique vision of the world. This is not to say that each language is so different from others that its speakers can never communicate outside their own people. The existence of ‘balanced bilinguals’ – people who have learned two languages from childhood with equal fluency – and the everyday phenomenon of translating and interpreting proves otherwise. Rather, it is to point out that languages are not identical in the way in which they talk about the world. There is a limit to the amount of exact translation equivalence that can be achieved, and people have to be satisfied with an approximation. And it is in this area of approximate equivalence that fascinating cultural differences can be found.

Commentators over the years have drawn attention to the importance of a comparative linguistic perspective on life. Here is Ezra Pound, in The ABC of Reading (1960):

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.

And here is George Steiner, in a 1967 essay (‘F R Leavis’):

Is it not the duty of the critic to avail himself, in some imperfect measure at least, of another language – if only to experience the defining contours of his own?

The ideal, of course, is to learn enough of another language to be able to get a sense of the differences directly – to feel the contours, without having to rely on a translating intermediary. The second-best approach is to read, in translation, as much as possible of the culturally distinctive literature of other languages, such as its poems, stories, myths, legends – and proverbs.

A collection of cross-linguistic proverbs is of special interest because it conveys two opposed but equally interesting messages. On the one hand, it draws attention to the differences of expression and perception which characterize the world’s communities. On the other hand, it shows that, to a very great extent, these communities are the same. People recognize, admire and worry over similar things. Notions such as ‘More haste, less speed’ can be found in dozens of cultures. And in such examples as the following, the nuance may vary, but the spirit behind the proverb remains the same:

A guest and a fish after three days are poison (FRANCE)

Seven days is the length of a guest’s life (MYANMAR)

However, this common human perspective is a complication when it comes to compiling a book such as this one, which aims to be illustrative of proverbial diversity and not comprehensive. It is not possible, in a short selection, to include a proverb as it appears in every country; nor – if reader interest is to be preserved – is it desirable. To illustrate the point, consider these variations on the guest theme – just a few taken from Selwyn Gurney Champion’s huge collection of translated cultural proverbs (see Further Reading):

A fish and a guest go bad on the third day and must be thrown out (BASQUE)

Fish and guests smell at three days old (DANISH)

A guest, like a fish, stinks the third day (DUTCH)

A fish and a guest after three days are poison (ENGLISH)

Guests and fish will get old on the third day (ESTONIAN)

The first day a guest, the second a guest, the third day a calamity (HINDI)

Even a welcome guest becomes a bore on the third day (JAPANESE)

We need only one example to appreciate the point, but that means grasping the nettle and selecting one country to represent all. I have endeavoured to introduce as wide a range of countries as possible, when making such choices. There are 110 (apart from England) listed in Index 5.

All anthologies are made with particular audiences in mind, and selections inevitably change over time. Until as recently as thirty years ago, it would have been normal to find in any proverb collection a predominantly masculine bias, reflecting traditional male-dominated society. Many items, both those native to English and those in translation, would have begun with ‘He who …’ or ‘The man who …’. Times have moved on. I have replaced these with a generic usage, unless there is a genuine male v female contrast involved. A remarkable number of proverbs, in many countries, also reflect unpalatable notions, such as the desirability of beating one’s wife to ensure obedience. And most countries have proverbs which are extremely rude about the people, politics, or religion of their neighbours, especially those with whom they have been at war. I have not included these either, wishing to provide a selection which reinforces the ideals of a more tolerant and inclusive age. The dismissive attitudes are available in the older literature cited in Further Reading, should anyone wish to read them.

From a linguistic point of view, I have adopted a sentence-based notion of proverb, as is usual these days. In earlier times, the notion of a proverbial expression covered a wide range of linguistic features, including idioms, riddles, similes, and everyday phrases. John Bull, hard cheese, Merry England, and I told you so have all been called ‘proverbs’ in one collection or another, in times past. All the proverbs in the present collection are sentences, conveying autonomous units of sense in a succinct form. Many display structural balance, parallelism, rhythmical contrast, and other rhetorical features which add to their memorability and help explain their common use. But it is not obligatory for a proverb to have a tightly controlled linguistic structure. What is important is the insight rather than the form.

It is not easy to define proverbs from the point of view of the kinds of insight they express. They are generalizations which express a remarkable range of functions – conveying advice, warning against consequences, predicting likelihoods, and recommending behaviours (such as diplomacy, courtesy, charity, and kindliness). Many are quite literal, such as An apple a day keeps the doctor away. The more interesting ones operate at two levels of meaning. Whatever we can say about the meaning of Don’t burn your candle at both ends, one thing is certain: we are not really talking about candles.

Proverb collections have used many methods of organization, from alphabetical order to a broad thematic classification. For the present book, I felt the most interesting principle would be to organize the material into semantic fields, as it is in these domains that we are likely to encounter interesting cultural comparisons. Semantic fields are ways of organizing words (more strictly, lexemes: see Index 4) into related groups, such as ‘furniture’, ‘fruit’, and ‘parts of the body’.

There is no single way of grouping words (and thus proverbs) semantically. Within the category of ‘parts of the body’, for example, we can distinguish such contrasts as ‘upper’ v ‘lower’, or ‘head’ v ‘trunk’ v ‘limbs’, or ‘arms’ v ‘legs’, or ‘fingers’ v ‘hands’, and so on. For the present book, I have allowed my depth of detail to be influenced by the nature of the proverbial material. Proverbs talk quite a lot about parts of the body, so I have devoted several sections to them (232–250). By contrast, there are very few proverbs devoted to musical instruments, so I have grouped all types of instrument under a single heading (272).

But how to organize the semantic fields into a sequence? Some collections adopt an arbitrary solution, listing them alphabetically, beginning with ‘Ability’ (or some other A-notion) and ending with such categories as ‘Year’ or ‘Youth’. This has the disadvantage of separating groups that we feel should belong together. Others list proverbs according to the ‘most significant word’ – an approach which is doomed to confusion, faced with the many proverbs that contain words that compete for our attention. Which is the most significant word in The sweeter the perfume, the uglier the flies which gather round the bottle? Plainly, all the main words make a contribution to the sense, and all need to be recognized.

I much prefer an approach which sequences proverb categories on the basis of the semantic relationship between them. I could have started from scratch, and devised a new system, but what is the point, when we already have a system of semantic classification that has been in widespread use for the past 150 years? I am referring to Roget’s Thesaurus, first published in May 1852. Roget has become the standard tool for people who want a thesaurus which organizes words into fields of meaning (as distinct from those thesauruses which list words in alphabetical order along with sets of synonyms and antonyms). I felt the level of generality which Roget used in his approach would be close to that required in a thematic classification of proverbs, so I adopted his logic as a means of sequencing the themes I needed to recognize in this book. Sometimes Roget’s categories were too abstract, and I had to break them down into more specific domains. Sometimes they were too narrow, and I had to group them into broader types. But on the whole the exercise was helpful, and many of my themes are in a one-to-one relationship with Roget’s. The approach may also help those who wish to take Roget in new directions. I have always regretted the absence of proverbs in that work, and Indexes 2 and 3 of the present book can be used to add a proverbial dimension to it.

How then to handle the complexity of such proverbs as The sweeter the perfume, the uglier the flies which gather round the bottle? If one of the constituent words stood out – flies, say – it would be possible to place the proverb into the appropriate category (‘Insects’) and cross-refer all the other words to it. But that would mean five cross references – from sweet, perfume, ugly, gather round, and bottle. Clearly, such a method of classification would flood a book with cross references, and readers would be forever jumping around with their fingers in different pages.

The alternative is to place the proverb into each of the semantic fields that its constituent words belong to. So, we would locate this proverb once under ‘Bottles’, once under ‘Sweet’, and so on. The demerit of this approach is that a single proverb appears several times throughout the book. But this is far outweighed, in my view, by the convenience of seeing each proverb in its appropriate semantic place, without the need for cross reference. The statistics are as follows: the book as a whole has some 7,500 listings, representing 2,015 different proverbs, grouped into 468 semantic fields, representing around 650 themes. For a list of the semantic fields and their order, see the Contents page. For a complete listing of all the themes recognized within these fields, see Index 1.

Anthologies are never finished, only abandoned. In the case of proverbs, one has to recognize very early on that the field is one of extraordinary magnitude. The proverbs of the world are numbered not in thousands but in millions. What is a couple of thousand among so many? I believe that small-scale compilations have their place, for there are still many avenues in the investigation of proverbs which remain to be explored. For this book, I have attempted to integrate just two dimensions – the cross-cultural and the semantic. But they are dimensions which are not usually considered together, and I hope thereby to make a small contribution to the evolution of this fascinating field.

This has also been an exercise in standing on shoulders. My research has taken me from the early classical collections, such as Ray’s Proverbs of 1767, into modern popular collections, of the ‘Thousand Chinese Proverbs’ type, and from there into the World Wide Web, where there are now some remarkable intercultural sites. I give some references in Further Reading. I warmly acknowledge the help I have had from earlier paremiographers, and hope that this latest anthology does them, and their field, no disservice.

David Crystal

THEMATIC CLASSIFICATION

1 Existence
2 Family
3 Sameness
4 Difference
5 Small amount
6 Large amount
7 Increase – Decrease
8 One alone
9 One of two
10 One of several
11 Accompaniment
12 Two – Twice – Both
13 Three – Third
14 Four or more
15 Next to nothing
16 Multitude
17 Better – Worse
18 Uniting
19 Separating
20 Chain – Rope – String
21 Whole – Part
22 Full – Entire
23 Empty – Lacking
24 Sequence – Order
25 Assemblages
26 Contents
27 Kinds
28 Always happening
29 Conformity
30 Repetition

31 Time
32 Years – Seasons – Months – Weeks
33 Days – Nights
34 Mornings – Afternoons – Evenings
35 Hours – Minutes – Seconds
36 Long time
37 Never
38 Clocks – Watches
39 Beginnings – Endings
40 Beforehand
41 Afterwards
42 Past – Present – Future
43 Sooner or later
44 Newness
45 Oldness
46 Age
47 A time and a place
48 Sometimes
49 Lasting
50 Ceasing
51 Changing
52 Happenings
53 Cause – Effect
54 Strength – Weakness
55 Production
56 Destruction
57 Force
58 Parents – Children
59 Locations
60 Standing – Sitting – Lying
61 Finding
62 Home – Abroad
63 Countries
64 Cities – Towns – Villages
65 Where to live
66 Houses
67 Doors – Windows – Keys
68 Guests
69 Absent – Present
70 Bags – Sacks
71 Barrels – Casks
72 Baskets
73 Bottles – Cans
74 Cups – Glasses
75 Dishes – Plates
76 Pots – Bowls – Jugs
77 Spoons – Ladles
78 Wells
79 Other containers
80 Loads
81 Big size
82 Little size
83 Big v Little
84 Distance
85 Nearness
86 Long – Short
87 Middle – Ends
88 Wide – Narrow
89 Hairs – Threads
90 High – Low
91 Depth
92 Hills – Mountains
93 Top – Bottom
94 Holding
95 Support
96 Tables – Chairs
97 Upright – Falling
98 Outside – Inside
99 Covering
100 Clothing
101 Bodywear
102 Footwear
103 Headwear
104 Weaving
105 Between
106 Walls
107 Edges
108 Enclosures
109 In front – Behind
110 Sides
111 Building
112 Straight – Bent – Crooked
113 Roundness
114 Prominences
115 Holes
116 Sharp things
117 Rough – Smooth
118 Opening – Closing
119 Motion
120 Standing still
121 Coming – Going
122 Walking
123 Riding
124 Carrying
125 Travel by land
126 Travel by sea
127 Travel by river
128 Swimming
129 Travel by air
130 Fast
131 Slow
132 Striking
133 Directions
134 Throwing
135 Pushing – Pulling
136 Arrival
137 Departure
138 Entering – Leaving
139 Hunger
140 Thirst
141 Eating
142 Food
143 Cooking
144 Meals
145 Fruit
146 Vegetables
147 Meat
148 Soup
149 Bakery
150 Dairy
151 Sauces – Condiments – Sweeteners
152 Alcoholic drinks
153 Non-alcoholic drinks
154 Excretion
155 Inserting – Extracting
156 Passing
157 Ascent
158 Descent
159 Lifting – Rising
160 Lowering – Dropping
161 Jumping
162 Revolving
163 Shaking
164 Things
165 Materials
166 World
167 Sun – Moon – Stars
168 Sky – Clouds – Weather
169 Wind
170 Weight
171 Hard – Brittle – Soft
172 Flour
173 Rubbing – Lubricating
174 Water
175 Semi-liquids – Semi-solids
176 Wet – Dry
177 Seas
178 Rivers – Streams
179 Inland water
180 Conduits
181 Land – Ground
182 Rocks – Stones
183 Breathing – Blowing
184 Birth
185 Life
186 Death
187 Life v Death
188 Killing
189 Drowning
190 Corpses – Burials
191 Bears
192 Camels
193 Cats
194 Cattle – Oxen
195 Dogs
196 Elephants
197 Foxes
198 Goats
199 Horses – Donkeys
200 Hyenas
201 Lions – Tigers – Leopards
202 Mice – Rats
203 Monkeys – Gorillas
204 Pigs
205 Rabbits – Hares
206 Sheep
207 Wolves
208 Other wild animals
209 Birds
210 Types of bird
211 Poultry
212 Fish – Fishing
213 Types of fish – Crustaceans
214 Frogs – Toads
215 Reptiles
216 Worms
217 Ants
218 Bees
219 Fleas
220 Flies
221 Other insects
222 Forests – Woods
223 Trees
224 Grass – Hay
225 Bushes – Hedges
226 Flowers – Gardens
227 Agriculture
228 People – Peoples
229 Men
230 Women
231 Men v Women
232 Heart – Blood
233 Bones – Joints
234 Back – Buttocks
235 Stomach – Liver
236 Skin – Fur – Shell – Feathers
237 Head
238 Hair (or not)
239 Face
240 Mouth
241 Tongue
242 Teeth
243 Ears
244 Eyes
245 Arms
246 Hands
247 Fingers – Thumbs
248 Legs
249 Feet – Toes
250 Tail
251 Washing
252 Feeling
253 Touch
254 Heat – Warmth
255 Fire
256 Extinguishing
257 Fuel – Smoke
258 Cold – Cool
259 Taste
260 Sweet
261 Sour
262 Smell
263 Sound
264 Silence
265 Faint noise
266 Loudness
267 Object noises
268 Animal noises
269 Human noises
270 Music
271 Song
272 Musical instruments
273 Hearing
274 Light
275 Candles – Lanterns
276 Dark
277 Looking – Seeing
278 Blindness
279 Colours
280 Black – White
281 Watching
282 Appearing – Disappearing
283 Mind
284 Thinking
285 Attention – Inattention
286 Careful – Careless
287 Questions
288 Answers
289 Seeking
290 Counting – Testing – Measuring
291 Possible – Probable – Impossible
292 Certain – Uncertain
293 Judging
294 Discovering
295 Belief – Unbelief
296 Knowledge
297 Ignorance
298 Scholarship
299 Truth
300 Error
301 Proverbs – Sayings
302 Intelligence
303 Wisdom
304 Stupidity
305 Madness
306 Remembering
307 Forgetting
308 Expectation
309 Destiny
310 Meaning
311 Information
312 Disclosure
313 Concealment
314 Books
315 News – Advertising
316 Teaching – Learning
317 Lies
318 Deception
319 Signs – Symbols
320 Art – Arts
321 Languages
322 Words
323 Names – Titles
324 Speech
325 Conversation
326 Reading – Writing
327 Literature
328 Endurance – Patience
329 Choice
330 Habit – Practice
331 Good
332 Better
333 Best
334 Bad
335 Worse
336 Worst
337 Business
338 Pursuit
339 Avoidance
340 Passageway
341 Roads – Streets
342 Need
343 Manner – Means
344 Tools
345 Providing – Keeping
346 Sufficient
347 Importance
348 No matter
349 Useful
350 Useless
351 Perfect – Imperfect
352 Clean
353 Dirty
354 Health – Ill health
355 Diseases
356 Mending – Restoring
357 Healing – Medicine
358 Doctors – Dentists
359 Deterioration
360 Poison
361 Safety – Danger
362 Preservation
363 Trying
364 Using – Not using
365 Deeds
366 Work – Pay – Leisure
367 Energy
368 Operation
369 Inactivity
370 Laziness
371 Awake – Asleep
372 Beds
373 Haste
374 Advice
375 Ability – Skill – Cunning
376 Difficult
377 Easy
378 Help
379 Taking sides
380 Quarrelling
381 Attack – Fighting
382 Defence – Castles
383 War – Peace
384 Soldiers
385 Weapons
386 Complete – Incomplete
387 Success – Failure
388 Fortune – Misfortune
389 Luck – Bad luck
390 Power
391 Obedience – Disobedience
392 Service
393 Freedom
394 Catching
395 Restraint
396 Permission
397 Prevention
398 Acquiring
399 Losing
400 Having possessions
401 Having a mind
402 Having a body
403 Having relatives and pets
404 What animals have
405 What things and notions have
406 Offers – Promises – Refusals
407 Retaining
408 Giving – Gifts
409 Receiving
410 Lending – Borrowing
411 Taking
412 Stealing
413 Buying – Selling
414 Money
415 Types of money
416 Rich – Poor
417 Payment
418 Cost
419 Cheap – Dear
420 Economizing
421 Happiness – Joy
422 Pleasure
423 Sadness – Grief
424 Pain
425 Troubles
426 Laughing – Jesting
427 Crying
428 Amusements
429 Performing arts
430 Gambling – Cards
431 Sports – Games
432 Beauty
433 Beautification
434 Jewellery – Ornament
435 Spoiling
436 Ridicule
437 Hope
438 Fear
439 Courage
440 Caution
441 Desire
442 Wonders
443 Fame – Shame
444 Pride – Modesty
445 Friends
446 Neighbours
447 Enemies
448 Society
449 Politeness
450 Love
451 Kisses – Caresses
452 Dislike – Anger
453 Marriage
454 Tenderness – Forgiveness
455 Goodness – Evil
456 Deserving
457 Respect – Contempt
458 Praise – Blame
459 Drunkenness
460 Laws – Lawyers
461 Punishment
462 God – Gods
463 Angels – Saints
464 Devils
465 Heaven
466 Worship
467 Clergy
468 Church

12 3 След.

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