Category Archives: Folk speech

“El Que Come y Canta Luego Loco Se Levanta”

Informant: My informant is a current sophomore at the University of Southern California. Her parents are from Jalisco, Mexico. However, she grew up in Denver, Colorado. 

Main Piece: “El que come y canta luego loco se levanta”

Transliteration: “He who eats and sings later crazy he wakes up”

Translation: “He who eats and sing later gets up crazy” 

Context: My informant stated that this proverb was/is usually directed to her whenever she sings at the table during dinner or at breakfast. She stated the following “I think my dad was trying to calm me down because out of respect you know you don’t want anyone to be humming while you are eating. Another reason, which I can think of why he would quiet me down was just for cautionary because I could choke or something. As for where he got this proverb, I believe, he got it from his parents as well. Honestly, now that I think about it…him and I are very similar. I’m more than sure that he also hummed at the table when he was younger. “

Analysis: Although it is sweet that my informant’s dad might say this proverb to her as means to be careful. I interpreted it in another way. I think when this proverb was told to my informant’s dad, it might have been to silence children and make them behave by presenting sort of like a threat/excuse that they would choke. I for one also have parents that come from Mexico, but I never have heard this phrase from them, but the rule at the table for is to eat with very little chatter. It comes to no surprise that maybe this proverb was drive by the desire to quiet down children, because sometimes children can be extremely chatty.

Every Closed Eye Ain’t Sleep Proverb

MS is a 60 year old mother of five who grew up in rural Virginia.

Context: This was performed over dinner, talking about black and southern culture.

Transcript:

MS: My mother said this all the time.

Collector: I think I know what it is.

MS: I’m sure you do. It goes:

“Every closed eye ain’t sleep and every goodbye ain’t gone”

MS: She used this in two different contexts. The first is when she would be resting her eyes and we thought she was asleep. We’d talk around her and try to be quiet, but when her eyes were still closed, she’d recite that. When she fell ill she’d tell all her folks that. “Every goodbye ain’t gone” meaning she would see us again.

Thoughts/Analysis: This proverb can be used in a religious context also. MS’s mother was very religious and strongly believed that her and her family would reunite after death and that her soul would remain with them until then. Death/afterlife related proverbs vary over different culture but overall convey the same thing.

For variations of this proverb, see:

Nieri, Itabari. “Only in the Americas : Every Good-Bye Ain’t Gone : Family Portraits and Personal Escapades by Itabari Njeri .” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1990. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-02-25-bk-1997-story.html#:~:text=The%20title%20of%20this%20collection,bye%20ain’t%20gone.%E2%80%9D.

“Deadbeat”

KS is a 56 year old father of five who grew up in and resides in Southern Maryland. He has worked in the credit industry for almost 15 years and is in high standing at his current credit union.

Context: This term is used the office when two or more employees are talking about a client and was collected over dinner. KS does not believe in the use of this word but hears it often.

Transcript:

Collector: So you have worked in the credit industry for a very long time. Is there any slang or jargon that you guys use at work?

KS: Some people might call someone who is behind on their loans a “deadbeat”. It is not a nice term to use but it gets the point across when discussing a client.

Collector: Can you explain more of your thoughts about the term?

KS. Of course. I, uh, have found that folks in higher economic standing use the term more often. I feel, think that those who have been there before take the term more offensively because they understand how it is. Folks tend to put people down without knowing their situation. You never know why someone is past due on their loans… Although our job is to hand out the loans and not do personal background checks, I still don’t find it right to talk about folks like that.

Thoughts/Analysis: This is significant because all occupations have their own jargon and the credit industry is a smaller industry that one might not find a lot of research on. Although “deadbeat” has one connotation, it also has different meanings across different folk groups, thus variation being especially prevalent. This word can be interpreted as a reflection of classism because those who have been in the position where they are late on paying their loans understand how it is to be at that point.

For variations of occupational folklore, see: Elliot Oring, 1986, Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction, Page 75

Ren Shan Ren Hai

AW is a 19 year old college student. She is an undergraduate computer science major and is from Los Angeles County. She is Chinese American and has lived in LA all of her life.

Context: AW is a good friend of mine, so we sat down after dinner to discuss folklore she picked up across her life.

Transcript:

AW: There is one saying that my parents say all the time. It goes:

人山人海

Translation: Ren Shan Ren Hai

English Translation: People mountain people see

Literal Translation: There are so many people here.

AW: The words don’t make sense but when you say it it just means, “woah there is a crap ton of people here”. It can vary from place to place though, like how in the US there are phrases for heavy rain and such.

Collector: Is that a phrase you use personally?

AW: Only when I’m speaking Mandarin and am with my parents and family friends.

Thoughts/Analysis: This idiom is a form of folk speech that Chinese people use to reference large crowds. It is similar to “long time no see”. It shows how folklore is directly linked to language in which the structure is similar. It also shows how language is used to connect folklore in different countries like how language is used to link India and Europe. I typically do not notice how people in America use expressions with the same structure and did not realize it was a universal thing because language changes sentence structure. I have found however that it is universal that many expressions use the natural environment as an idiom or use an idiom to express the natural environment (like rain).

For other variations of Chinese Idioms regarding mountains or seas, see:

Rapatan, N. (2013, May 14). Yu gong yi shan idiom. USC Digital Folklore Archives. Retrieved April 20, 2022, from http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/yu-gong-yi-shan-idiom/

Bringing home a wolf (humorous proverb)

Main Piece:

JK (50s, american-polish, father): “It’s like buying a wolf and then freaking out when it attacks your kids!”

Background:

The informant is my dad remarking over the phone in response to me explaining how I was upset about not being able to finish working on a multitude of projects outside of school. When asked about where he heard the phrase, he pointed to Catholic school and the sort of lamb/wolf proverbs that he was exposed to there. He also claimed it to have similarity to the saying “bringing a knife to a gunfight.”

Context:

The phrase was said in an effort to make me laugh and bring light to the worry I’d been expressing (and it did get me to do so). It’s as if to say “well, what were you expecting to happen?”

Thoughts:

The proverb itself is innately very dark in nature, and yet hits that sort of shock humor coupled with a simple realization. The idea of having your children eaten is a terrible concept, but the ignorance/gullibility of the person who would do such is. An added factor to the proverb is the in the word choice of “buying” said wolf. There is a certain action in paying for the beast that ends up screwing you over, which bolsters and reveals the main lesson of the saying. It asks the recipient of said advice to be more pragmatically present in the day to day; to not hyperextend their own capabilities.