Monthly Archives: April 2019

Passing Salt for Bad Luck

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Context: Informant is speaking about superstitions and then proceeds to introduce the specific implications around salt.

Informant:

[During a face-to-face conversation]

“There’s a lot of superstitions, it’s a lot of really like… like basic ones. But even in Mexico, even when I’m there, you DON’T walk under a ladder. NO shoes on the bed, no bags on the floor OR on the bed. No hats either. Um, umbrellas can be opened… and you can’t pass salt… Let’s say you want salt right? I can’t give it to you in your hand. I have to put it on the table and you pick it up.”

KA: And why’s… is there a reason why-

“It’s bad luck.”

KA: Okay.

“All of this is bad luck.”

KA: Okay, and do you know where this comes from, or is this just like… something that’s been there for a long time?

“It’s been there for a long time. Like we all do it. Um… and it’s taken very seriously.”

Introduction: This piece was introduced to the informant by their mother.

Analysis: I think there are many renditions of salt superstitions which can be found across cultures and this causes me to question what salt, in particular, symbolizes since there are so many beliefs, especially regarding back luck, surrounding it. Growing up, my mom always told me that if you knocked a salt shaker over, it was bad luck, and to undo that luck, one would have to toss the salt over their shoulder. As I got older, I was told it needed to be your left shoulder specifically by others who also had a version of this superstitious practice to reverse bad luck. To this day, I still participate in the tossing of the salt to avoid back luck and have seen more versions including this Mexican idea of not being able to pass salt.

 

For reference to another rendition of a salt superstition, refer to

Welsh, C. (2019, Jan 3). Spilling Salt. Retrieved from http://www.timelessmyths.co.uk/spilling-salt.html

Astrological Indian Wedding Ceremony

Nationality: Indian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 3/10/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Context/Background: The Informant is an Indian-American who has witnessed wedding customs tailored to suit an astrological calendar in order to promote success and prosperity of Indian Marriages.

Informant:

“When you get married and you’re supposed to check like… the person’s astrological sign or something- or when they were born and then you like compare the two. And that timing will like… determine when it’s okay for the literal marriage ceremony to take place. So the wedding can go on for the entire day, but the time the wedding ceremony takes place happens at on specific dates and times. Obviously, some people just ignore it… but like… in the summertime, I was in India and my cousin fully like… he fully got married. Like had a wedding in the middle of the night. So that happened. If you look it up online, I’m sure you’ll find something. And there’s like a special calendar that you can buy from the temple that’ll like tell you! Like, Oh! This is your day, and this is their day, like it’s cool to get married on this day. And like, yeah my grandma has one in her kitchen and she like… refers back to it sometimes, and it’s like ‘When is it okay?'”

Introduction: The Informant was introduced to this custom through her family; more specifically, her grandmother.

Analysis/Interpretation: I find this ritual interesting because I’d never seen marriages that strayed from a daytime setting. The notion that the actual ceremony should occur at a specific time is actually really sentimental and I’d find much meaning in designating a particular time to get married. I feel as though many astrological encounters have been accentuated more recently in popular culture, but to find them more engrained seriously in cultures’ traditions opens up another insight on it. This leads me to wonder how other cultures may have additional differing wedding customs which I’d like to explore in more depth.

El Raton Perez- A variation of the Tooth Fairy – Myth

Nationality: Argentinian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/13/19
Primary Language: English

Piece: “I remember el Raton Perez, basically it’s the Argentinian equivalent of the tooth fairy. It’s basically a fucking sewer rat, I’m just saying sewer rat out of spite, but that was the base of it, you put your tooth under your pillow and he takes it and leaves you money.”

Background information: The informant is a very comedic student with an Argentinian background. Although he resides in the US, he strongly identifies with his Argentinian roots.

Context: This is a myth that he heard as a kid. Instead of knowing the tooth fairy as the “tooth fairy”, he came to know it as el “Raton Perez”, which translates to “Perez the Rat”

Personal Analysis: I was first introduced to the “tooth fairy” by my parents. Being of Hispanic descent, the “tooth fairy” was first introduced to me as “El raton de los dientes” which translates to “The teeth Rat” more or less, the tooth fairy, even though it’s not an actual fairy. I’ve never heard the Argentinian version of the tooth fairy so I was especially intrigued to hear a common last name given to the rat. (Perez) The use of a last name is unique to the Argentinian adaptation because most Latin American countries classify the “tooth fairy” as just, and only that. No specific identity is used.

 

 

Don’t Stab Your Food with Chopsticks – A Chinese Folk Belief

Nationality: Chinese, Vietnamese
Age: 49
Residence: Ewa Beach, HI
Performance Date: April 14, 2019
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Vietnamese, English

Item:

Q: You said how you can’t stab chopsticks into food?

H: 落去飯(lok6 heoi3 faan6), right?

[Translation: Into rice right?]

Q: Yeah, 飯 (faan6) or 嘢食 (je5 sik6) in general?

[Translation: Yeah, rice or food in general?]

H: 嘢食 (je5 sik6) or 飯 (faan6) or whatever.  Why?

[Translation: Food or rice or whatever.  Why?]

H: 你拜神你係唔係插咗兩枝香落去 (lei5 baai3 sen4 lei5 hai6 m5 hai6 caap3 zo2 loeng2 zi2 hoeng1 lok6 heoi3).  It look like 你拜神插嗰啲嘢(lei5 baai3 sen4 caap3 go2 di1 je5).

[Translation: When you pray, don’t you stick the two incense into the holder?  It looks like when you’re praying and you have the two incense in the incense holder.]

 

Context:

I collected this piece in a Cantonese-English conversation about Chinese and Vietnamese folk beliefs.  The informant can speak Cantonese fluently but chose to speak to me in both Cantonese and English for my understanding.  The informant is Chinese and was born and raised in a Chinese community in Vietnam before immigrating to the United States in her late teens.  She didn’t mention specifically where she learned not to stab chopsticks into your food from, but only said, similar to a number of other folk beliefs and customs she knew of, that you would just know or pick up this sort of thing growing up from the community around you.

 

Analysis:

The basis of many folk beliefs is the belief in magic, either sympathetic or contagious.  In the case of not stabbing your chopsticks into food, the idea that like produces like comes into play because as the informant says, the two chopsticks standing up looking like sticks of incense used when praying.  Praying occurs for a number of reasons, death in the family and respecting one’s ancestors included, and it can be highly ritualized in Chinese culture, particularly when praying to the ancestors due to the long-standing tradition of ancestor worship and respect for those who came before you in your lineage.  There are rules about where the incense and incense holder are placed, what kind of offerings should be made, and when to pray.  For example, praying for ancestors has set time frames but praying after an individual’s death is done as appropriate.  As such, standing chopsticks in food not only emulates incense in the physical image, it may be seen as a poor recreation of the ritual and consequently a disrespect to one’s ancestors.  With such emphasis placed on respecting one’s lineage, this is very majorly looked down upon.  Furthermore, considering how like produces like – especially if it is not the correct time to pay one’s respects to their ancestors – someone may bring death or other bad omens to themselves or those around them through emulation of praying at an otherwise inappropriate time.

French Joke Turned Folk Practice for Middle School French Class

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/19/19
Primary Language: English

French Folk Joke:

“My 7th grade French class all took french. It was all our first year of french and I went to middle school with a bunch of people I ended up going to high school with so we all took a bunch of classes together. We had learned this joke that became an inside joke. It was the first French joke we ever learned. We would tell it to each other and share the reactions of the people we told the joke to with the rest of the class. So the joke is, ‘Comment s’appelle un chien qui vends des médicaments? Un pharmachienne.’ So it means, ‘What do you call a dog who sells medicine?’ The word chien is dog, so the answer is,  you call it a mixture of pharmacy and dog. The word for pharmacist which I don’t know off the top of my head and then ‘chien’. ”

Context:

A middle school french class in Omaha, Nebraska.

Informant Background:
The informant is 21, from Nebraska originally. She now resides in Southern California.

My Analysis:

This play on words is a good way to get children to remember vocabulary. There are many words in french that sound almost identical to their english pronunciation. Hence, it is easy to remember those. However, the ones that don’t align with english pronunciation like ‘chien’ are so abstract that this little joke will help young students remember the vocabulary term. My informant said she does not remember any french, but she does remember this joke. So, clearly this was an effective learning mechanism.