Category Archives: Folk speech

Great Depression Proverb

Nationality: American
Age: 52
Occupation: Commercial Real Estate Broker
Residence: Roswell, GA
Performance Date: April 24, 2017
Primary Language: English

My informant’s mother was raised in the rural American south during the Great Depression. She learned this expression from her mother, as it was a popular phrase at the time.

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without”

This proverb essentially teaches about intense resourcefulness in a time of harsh economic recession. It stresses the idea that items should not be thrown away until they are absolutely useless, and not to hold onto things that are not practical. It provides a logical strategy for an emotionally taxing time in American history.

Helping Hand Proverb

Nationality: American
Age: 52
Occupation: Commercial Real Estate Broker
Residence: Roswell, GA
Performance Date: April 24, 2017
Primary Language: English

My informant comes from a family that has lived in rural Georgia (the US state, not the Eurasian country) for many generations. She told me that this proverb was often spoken by her father’s grandmother, who raised my informant’s father for a while during his childhood.

“The helping hand is at the end of your own arm”

This proverb stresses self-reliance and independence, and I noticed a similarity with another common proverb “God helps those who help themselves”. This proverb must have resonated with my informant’s family background of rural farmers who had to practice self-reliance in order to survive in a post-war time period and severe economic recession.

Bengali Insult

Nationality: Bangladeshi-American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Atlanta, GA
Performance Date: April 20, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Bengali

My informant is the daughter of immigrants from Bangladesh, and a close friend of mine. She has often told me of the unique Bengali insults and phrases that her family would use with each other. Here is a notable example:

আপনি একটি গাভী ডিম ডাল মাথা হয়

Āpani ēkaṭi gābhī ḍima ḍāla māthā haẏa

Literal translation: “You are a cow’s egg vegetable head”

My informant expressed to me that she was unsure if it was a widely used Bengali phrase, and it would be difficult to find out with a simple google search, but she assured me that most everyone in her extended family uses this phrase. It simply means to refer to someone who is insignificant or idiotic.

I might classify this phrase as a “surrealist insult”, as it seems to be a string of words tied together with little meaning outside of simple degradation.

I Love You Like Salt

Nationality: Bangladeshi-American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Atlanta, GA
Performance Date: April 20, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Bengali

My informant is the daughter of immigrants from Bangladesh. She told me about a phrase that her mother would often text to her as a gesture of affection:

লবণের মতো আমি তোমাকে ভালোবাসি

Labaṇēra matō āmi tōmākē bhālōbāsi

The phrase translates into “I love you like salt”. This phrase references the fact that food is flavorless and drastically less appetizing without salt, meaning that the recipient brings joy and meaning (aka “flavor”) to the expresser’s life. This phrase actually originates from an old Bengali folk tale, which my informant described to me:

“There is a pretty popular folk tale in Bengali tradition, and from that folktale this phrase, um, ‘I love you like salt/āmi tōmākē bhālōbāsi’. And it comes from this tale where, um, a king didn’t appreciate his daughter enough and his daughter always cooked his food for him. So, his daughter stopped putting salt into his food. And then he realized, ‘Oh God, why is my food not tasting good anymore? What is this?’ and she was like ‘I took away the salt’ and her dad was like ‘You did what now, my daughter?’ and she was like ‘you haven’t appreciated me enough so I can’t- I’m not putting in enough effort into seasoning your food correctly.’ *laughs* And he said ‘I’m sorry. I love you… um… I hope we can reconciliate[sic]’ and then she started putting salt back into his food, and they lived happily ever after *laughs*”

I personally find this expression to be rather beautiful and I love that it comes attached to a narrative.

“Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin.”

Nationality: Irish
Age: 54
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Dublin, Ireland
Performance Date: January 22nd, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Irish

Translation (Literal): There’s no hearth like your own hearth

Translation (Modern English): There’s no place like home

 

Background: Informant is 54-year-old woman living in Dublin, Ireland. Raised in rural Ireland, she has a wealth of Irish proverbs and sayings, which are called seanfhocail in the original Irish (literally “old words”). She is married and has one grown daughter. She is signified in this conversation by the initials C.D.

 

Main Piece:

C.D.: The saying goes, “Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán fein.”

 

A: Would you be able to define that for me?

 

C.D.: Of course. It’s an old Irish seanfhocail – that’s like an old proverb or saying – that means ‘there’s no hearth like your own hearth,’ kind of like the modern ‘there’s no place like home.’ I’d say that’s the most popular one of all the old sayings. I think a lot of them got assimilated into English because there’s loads of things that are kind of cliché sayings nowadays that got taken from the Irish and made their way into popular culture. I suppose that it helped that there was already a phrase in English ready to accommodate it.

 

A.: And do you think that it’s true? Is there really no place like home?

 

C.D.: Well, it’s nice to go on holidays and everything, but I don’t think I’d ever leave Ireland for good. A lot of my family emigrated and it was tough on them, they could hack it of course but they’d always be counting down the days until they came home – and then they’d be off again! I don’t want to live my life like that. I’ve made a life for myself here and I couldn’t be happier with it. I wouldn’t want to have to be wishing my time away, sure life’s too short for that! I suppose that’s why we use it when welcoming people home, because it’s such a quintessentially Irish phrase and in the language it has a bit more punch to it.

 

Performance context: I interviewed the informant over FaceTime due to her being in Ireland and I in California. In conversation about me coming home at the end of the semester, she mentioned this saying to me. However, this saying was not new to me as seanfhoclai are taught during Irish class at about the age of 10/11 in most Irish primary schools. At school, the purpose of the exercise of learning these proverbs was to enrich our spoken Irish and connect us with a history of Gaeilgeoir (Irish speakers). These phrases are very common in speech, even in their Anglicized format.

 

My Thoughts: Folk speech and expressions are some of the most enduring and transmitted forms of folklore. Alan Dundes says that proverbs are concise statements of situational philosophies, and so this leads us to consider in particular the Irish history of emigration in relation to this saying. This has a twofold effect. Firstly, this saying appeals in particular to emigrants, who would experience homesickness on a scale perhaps unrivalled by any other people. Romantic Irish writers abound write about their longing for Ireland, but acknowledge that they did leave for a reason. Secondly, my informant’s clever linking of this saying with the Anglicized and more popular ‘there’s no place like home’ illustrates the inherent and large field of transmission in folk-proverbs. I am personally unsure whether the English or Irish phrase came first, or whether this exists in a multiplicity of cultures, perhaps further collections can shed light on this. This saying is also past-focused, reinforcing Dundes’ idea that European culture is less future-focused than American society, as this saying suggests the ultimate comfort exists in what one has, as opposed to what one will have in the unreachable and ever-fleeing future.