Category Archives: Folk speech

Chinese Proverb/ Chengyu

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 13, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Note: The form of this submission includes the dialogue between the informant and I before the cutoff (as you’ll see if you scroll down), as well as my own thoughts and other notes on the piece after the cutoff. The italics within the dialogue between the informant and I (before the cutoff) is where and what kind of direction I offered the informant whilst collecting. 

Informant’s Background:

My parents and I are from Central China, but I grew up in Kentucky.

Piece and Full Translation Scheme of Folk Speech:

Original Script: 蜻蜓点水

Transliteration: qīng tíng diǎn shuǐ

Translation: “The dragonfly touches the water lightly” or “superficial contact”

Piece Background Information:

We have a saying in my family that goes like “qīng tíng diǎn shuǐ”.

You know how when dragonflies fly around a pond and when they touch the water, they gently touch it and keep flying along? Well that’s just another way of describing someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. They say he’s just “qīng tíng diǎn shuǐ”. And that just means like they don’t go deep, they don’t go all the way into the water, they just touch it.

My mom would use this to describe my dad, for example when he would say he was going to clean the kitchen and like only clean half the dishes and leave everything else to be done. So I would hear that phrase used a lot.

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Context of Performance: 

In person, during the day at Ground Zero, a milkshake shop and cafe on USC’s campus in Los Angeles.

Thoughts on Piece: 

The comparison of half-way cleaning to a dragonfly who skims the water is quite a romanticized outlook and allows for the conversation of “well… you really only cleaned a little bit” to be more easily had, as there is a funny context added to it. I can definitely relate to needing to somehow calmly and casually bring up to a roommate that they aren’t pulling their share.

Gujarati Proverb Common Around Diwali

Nationality: Gujarati
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 28, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Gujarati

Note: The form of this submission includes the dialogue between the informant and I before the cutoff (as you’ll see if you scroll down), as well as my own thoughts and other notes on the piece after the cutoff. The italics within the dialogue between the informant and I (before the cutoff) is where and what kind of direction I offered the informant whilst collecting. 

Informant’s Background:

I’m from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.

Piece and Full Translation Scheme of Folk Speech:

Original Script: मिच्छामि दुक्कडम्

Transliteration: micchāmi dukkaḍaṃ

Translation: “May all the evil that has been done be fruitless” or “If I have offended you in way, knowingly or unknowingly, in thought, word, or deed, then I seek your forgiveness”.

Piece Background Information:

One specific thing that’s very interesting- whenever we meet someone on our new year’s day, we say “micchāmi dukkaḍaṃ”. It basically means, “forgive me for anything I’ve done wrong over the past year and I want to start over on a clean slate with you”. Our new year, I think, comes right after Diwali- this big festival of lights. So it (the new year) is the day after that because the whole thing about Diwali is that it’s the conquering of good over evil, based on an ancient story.

So the ancient story is about this lord, he was called Lord Rama. He was a king who was in exile and his wife Sita was taken away by this evil king named Ravanna. So he crossed what is now called the region, the sea crossing between India, the south tip of India, and the current Sri Lanka to go and get his wife back. And they had like a fourteen day war where they basically, the two sides were fighting, and it ended with Rama putting an arrow through Ravana’s chest to kill him. The festival of lights celebrates his return after exile, back to the capital city.

Basically, we are asking for forgiveness from the other person and we want to start the new year off with a clean slate.

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Context of Performance:

In person, during the day, in Ronald Tutor Campus Center on USC’s campus in Los Angeles.

Thoughts on Piece: 

Through setting off fireworks, lanterns, and the like during Diwali, partakers in this tradition are recalling the celebrations that were believed to have taken place upon Rama and Sita’s return to their kingdom in northern India, after having been exiled and defeating King Ravanna. In this sense, Diwali can be seen as homeopathic magic as it is performed in order to bring about new beginnings/ wipe the slate clean through recalling the similar instance in which the slate was wiped clean for the once exiled Lord Rama. It also follows the Earth cycle as the celebration’s dates are dependent upon the Hindu lunar calendar.

For more information on Diwali, see Sims, Alexandra. “What is Diwali? When is the festival of lights?” The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 09 Nov. 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2017. <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/diwali-what-is-the-festival-of-lights-and-when-is-it-celebrated-a6720796.html>.

Sparrow’s gift

Nationality: Japenese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: China
Performance Date: March 15, 2017
Primary Language: Chinese

A friend of mine, who’s an international exchange student from Japan now currently studying in China, contributes this story. She read this story from a Japanese traditional story book, but she says this story is actually quite well-known. We interviewed in Chinese so the following is only rough translation of what she shared.

Story:

”

There were two poor old women living as neighbors in the village. One day, one of the old lady found an injured sparrow in her yard, so she took in the sparrow and took good care of it. Everyone in her family as well as the neighbors laughed at her for “seeking for troubles”, but she ignored them. She fed the sparrow rice and water every day, and tended its wound with great care. Days after, the sparrow was fully healed and the old lady let it flew away. However, the sparrow came back a while later with some seeds in its mouth. The sparrow left the seeds to the old lady and took off again. The old lady took the seeds and planted it in her yard. The next morning, where she planted the seeds now there has fully grown trees of countless gourds. Each gourd was as huge as a human head. The old lady took a gourd and opened it — the gourd was full of rice! The overjoyed lady then shared the rice and her amazing story with the neighbors and friends.

The other old woman of course learned the story. Since her family blamed her for not able to do anything for them while the lady next door get herself and her family trees of rice, she decided to do the same thing — tend for the sparrows and get the seeds. For the next few days, she threw stones at the sparrows stopped by in her yard and successfully hit one. However, to make sure she would get the magical seeds, she continued to do so till she got three injured sparrows in total. She then tends for the wounded sparrows just as her neighbor did, and let them go once they were healed. The three sparrows did come back with seeds, and the old woman planted them in her yard as well. The next day, just as she expected, there grew trees of huge gourds. She took gourds inside with her family and cut them open, excited to store all those rice for themselves. However, it was not rice in it but poisonous snacks and bugs. The woman and her family were all bite and died.

”

Thoughts:

Animal tales seems to be popular i Japan. In fact, this informant shared several animal tales with me, and every each of these tales were seemed to aim at teaching people a moral lesson through animals — this story would be a lesson of not to be jealous and greedy but to be kind. The ending of the story seemed to be a bit extreme but I think only through exaggeration the folklore could send out the message and warn people. A funny thing is, there is a similar Chinese folklore that every thing is the same except the old women were brothers in the Chinese version.

“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”

Nationality: English and German
Age: 87
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Seal Beach, California
Performance Date: April 16, 2017
Primary Language: English

“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

The informant was born in Atchinson, Kansas, but moved to California when she was seven, where she has lived ever since.

While the informant cannot remember a specific instance where she heard this saying, she explained that this was something that people would say over and over again. She considers her generation to have been homebodies and that their sayings simply reflected the way people were living. To her, these sayings came from people who were doing more manual work, like farming and housekeeping, rather than office work. She herself never had a job, but fulfilled her goal of becoming a mother and homemaker.

With this saying in particular, she was quick to point out that it didn’t say women. Because of this, she explained that it was great for a man, but didn’t apply to her necessarily. She went on to explain that she would get up early not because she liked to, but to have quiet time. However, she was never made wealthy or wise from it, with maybe only being healthier coming into play for her.

The informant relayed her folklore to me at my dining room table. I have known her my entire life as she is a close relative. I had already asked her about her folklore weeks before, but upon meeting on this day, she brought a list that she had written of all she could think of so that she would not forget when she told me. While she read the specific folklore off the sheet, the other details I got from her were not pre-determined.

As the informant herself was/is a homebody, it is natural that phrases that suited her lifestyle were the ones that she heard on a regular basis. Her friends were very similar to her and her husband as well. It was interesting though, that while she claimed it did not apply to her, she still woke up early. I believe that the folklore influenced her without her even knowing it.

American Proverb.

Nationality: American
Age: 33
Occupation: Banker
Residence: New York, New York.
Performance Date: 04/17/16
Primary Language: English

Subject: Proverb.

Informant:

Brandon grew up in Sacramento California to a practicing Jewish family. He is an only child and works as a financial advisor at a back in New York City.

Original script: This too shall pass. “My grandmother on my mothers side always said it, she literally said it for everything.
Happy or sad, she always said this too shall pass, it to me is a reminder to enjoy every moment because nothing lasts forever, sorrow fades as much as the happiness does. To me it’s not negative, it is grounding, and a reminder that change is constant.”

Background Information about the Piece by the informant: The informant had a tattoo of the proverb on his foot. He got it to remind him to always live in the moment.

Context of the Performance: No context.

Thoughts about the piece: Like most proverbs, this one is used to guide someone in times of hardship. I can also relate it to the American Future Worldview that Dundes wrote about in his article “Thinking Ahead”.