Category Archives: Folk speech

Elephant Game

Nationality: USA
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

JD described a game called Elephant, where the person “in the know” running the game (the Teller) continues saying things following a hidden pattern until the pattern is found out by the guessers. JD learned this game from his friend PJ from Las Vegas, who “knows a bunch of these games.”

Some selections from our rounds:

JD: “There’s two elephants in the fire. There’s one elephant on Cy’s shoulder. How many elephants are there?”

               Answer: “There are 5 elephants.”

JD: “There’s 4 elephants in the big ol thing of IPA. There’s 2 elephants on that tree. How many elephants?”

               Answer: “There are 3 elephants.”

We went through about 10 rounds before we started to figure out the pattern.

The answer is that however many words are in the question asking how many elephants there are, is the number of elephants.

Informant background

JD is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from Las Vegas, NV.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

These interactive riddle games are often constructed so that the answer appears more complicated than it actually is. They often involve pointing out concrete objects, people, or places, so that the guesser’s attention is diverted to those specifics, while the real answer is something more abstract about the words used or delivery of the speaker. This paradigm shows up across almost all of the question-and-answer riddle games I have experienced.

Little Green Door

Nationality: USA
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

DR learned this question-and-answer riddle game from camp. The participants repeatedly ask if arbitrary items can “pass through the Little Green Door” until the participants figure out the pattern of what can and cannot pass through.

Some selections from our rounds:

CT: “Can I pass through the Little Green Door?”

DR: “No.”

BM: “Can my beer pass through the Little Green Door?”

DR: “Yes.”

After about 20 rounds, the answer was deduced: anything with a double letter in it can pass through, anything else cannot.

Informant background

DR is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from Sudbury, MA.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

These interactive riddle games are often constructed so that the answer appears more complicated than it actually is. They often involve pointing out concrete objects, people, or places, so that the guesser’s attention is diverted to those specifics, while the real answer is something more abstract about the words used or delivery of the speaker. This paradigm shows up across almost all of the question-and-answer riddle games I have experienced.

“Wear it in Good Health”

Nationality: Latino, American, Jewish
Age: 23
Occupation: User Researcher
Residence: Los Angles, California
Performance Date: May 2nd, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

 The informant explains how a common Jewish expression came into existence and the importance of it within the community.

L: Why do the Jews say “wear it in good health?” 

M: Okay, so that’s something– um, basically every adult in my life, whenever I got a new pair of shoes, would tell me to “wear them in good health”. And for years, I just thought that was a thing that people said, until I moved away from south Florida and was made aware, no that’s just Jewish people. 

So, I asked my one grandmother who’s still alive about it and she told me it’s because, like, growing up in New York– or not even New York — growing up as a Jewish person in the 40s and 50s, like, there was always this sense that you could just die. So, when someone tells you to wear something in good health it’s both like a command to tell you that you need to be healthy, but it’s also, like, a wish for your well being. Because, like, there’s a culture of worrying about people. 

Like, there’s a stereotype of the Jewish grandmother who’s always worried. Those things sort of come from the same place. They’re sort of like, a wish for your health — like, don’t do something stupid!

Thoughts:

Upon further research, this Yiddish saying is directly related to the saying “Use it in good health”. “Use it in good health” is simply a version of “wear it in good health” that has become popularized throughout the United States.

It’s interesting how much Yiddish vocabulary has made it into the American vernacular. Words like “schmuck”, “bagel”, “glitch”, and “klutz” are just a small selection of words that have crossed over from Yiddish into American English. It’s no surprise that Yiddish sayings have followed with the Yiddish words themselves.

Cutting Hairs in the 1st Lunar Month

Nationality: China
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tsingtao, Shandong, China
Performance Date: 5/1/2021
Primary Language: Chinese

Backgrounds:

DerShann is currently a student at USC, majoring in Philoshophy. His family are from Tsingtao, Shandong, China. He likes to play the game League of Legends, and the following folklore is collected during some of the games we played together via the voice chat chanel.

The Main Piece:

DerShann: Let me think of some folklore…… Right! If you cut your hair in the 1st lunar month, your uncle (from the mother’s side) dies.

Me: Yea, I know. Do you really believe that?

DerShann: Well, not really. But I do try not to cut my hair in the first month, to kind of show respect for my uncle, and also, this is like some kind of tradition, and it’s fun to keep it.

Analysis:

This is, of course, a folk belief. That your uncle will die if you cut your hair in THE 1st lunar month. But, personally, I would also want to classify it as a proverb:

the original text is :正月剃头死舅舅

Phonetic：zheng yue ti tou si jiu jiu

Translation: If you cut your hair in the 1st lunar month, your uncle dies.

The key her is that “tou” rhymes with “jiu” in Chinese. And I do believe this sentence is used to warn people, but not really about cutting their hairs or about their uncles.

Zheng yue, the 1st lunar month, is the month that follows the Chinese New Year. Baiscally, the whole month is going to be filled with holiday atmosphere, and everyone’s supposed to have a good rest and prepare for the next year, and, of course, be with their family. Getting your hair cut can be an inconvenient thing: you must leave your home and go to a barber, the barber has to cut your hair, etc. And even if you don’t cut your hair, it’s not that much of a big deal. So I think the act of cutting one’s hair actually represents spending lots of time and efforts on business matters that are not urgent, which in a way ruins the Chinese New Year Experience. So, with my understanding of these words as a proverb, it is warning people to put off unnecessary works during the New Year.



The Minus One Horse

Nationality: China
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Shanghai China
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Backgrounds:

P-M was born in China and finsihed his middle school and high school in LA, California. He is currently studying at USC. P-M shared this piece of folklore with me after I asked him whether he know of any interesting folklore when we were chatting after dinner.

Some Background Knowledge:

三国杀（san guo sha）is a very popular board game in China, which is based on historical events in late Han Dynasty. In this game, there is an equipment called 减一马（jian yi ma）, word to word translation, minus one horse. The function doesn’t matter.


The Main Piece:

P-M: Bro, what should I say if someone thinks only kids who cannot make it into good universities in China study abroad?

Me: WTF? I though only people who cannot afford studying abroad go to Chinese universities.

P-M: I’ll give him jian yi ma.

Me: What does that mean?

P-M: Word by word, he’ll have minus one horse. (in chinese, the word “horse”, ma, sounds super similar to the word “mother”, ma) Every San Guo Sha player knows that.

Me: Duuuude!! That’s sooooo cool.

Analysis:

P-M gives the other guy minus one horse, which means minus one mother. In other words, his mother is dead. This is a very offensive curse in the Chinese language. However, by using a card in a game to refer to this curse, it seems a lot more gentle and humorous, and therefore more acceptable. This shows how board games has influenced our everyday life and how curse words can be expressed in humorous ways by refering to games.