Category Archives: Folk speech

Bolje vrabac u ruci, nego golub na grani

Nationality: Croatian
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Residence: Dubrovnik, Croatia
Performance Date: 4/23/2017
Primary Language: Croatian
Language: English

Bolje vrabac u ruci, nego golub na grani

Informant: MK was born in New York, but raised in Dubrovnik, Croatia. He is a senior in high school. He has an older brother, and a younger sister. While growing up our grandparents would teach us valuable life lessons and most of the time they would use a proverb in doing so. Proverbs are a huge part of our family’s culture.

 

My informant heard this proverb from his grandfather and his teacher back in elementary school.

 

What does “bolje vrabac u ruci, nego golub na grani” mean?

 

“The literal translation is better a sparrow in a hand than a pigeon on the branch. The English equivalent of this proverb is “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” This means something you have for certain now is of more value than something better you may get, especially if you risk losing what you have in order to get it.”

 

I think this proverb has a good message to it; don’t selfishly throw away something good just because you think you deserve better. However, I also believe you should never settle. If you truly think something out there is better and you can achieve it, I say go for it. The proverb is applicable sometimes, and not others.

ko nema u glavi ima u nogama

Nationality: Croatian
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Residence: Dubrovnik, Croatia
Performance Date: 4/23/2017
Primary Language: Croatian
Language: English

Ko ne radi glavom radi nogama (ko nema u glavi ima u nogama)

Informant: MK was born in New York, but raised in Dubrovnik, Croatia. He is a senior in high school. He has an older brother, and a younger sister. While growing up our grandparents would teach us valuable life lessons and most of the time they would use a proverb in doing so. Proverbs are a huge part of our family’s culture. MK heard this proverb multiple times weather it was from family members and schoolteachers.

 

What does this proverb mean?

 

“Roughly translated it means one who doesn’t have it in his head has it in his feet. Another version of it is one who doesn’t work with his head, works with his feet.”

 

Does this proverb have any meaning to you?

 

“Yes, it does. My grandmother tells me this almost on a daily basis haha. I got so use to hearing it that it became almost like a joke between me and my grandma.”

 

The proverb explains how if you don’t think, you will have to go back to where you started and do the same thing you should’ve done already. For an example my wallet is in my room and I already left the house to go for lunch, I have to go back home (work my legs) because I forgot it (didn’t think). All in all the proverb is clever and like most of them it teaches a lesson.

“el nopal en la frente” and the origin myth of Mexican City

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 31 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

 My informant (AG)’s parents moved from Mexico to Los Angeles before her birth. She speaks Spanish to her parents in home and is surrounded by Mexican culture.

 

Main piece:

 

Original script: “el nopal en la frente.”

Transliteration: “The cactus on your forehead.”

Full translation: “You merely look Mexican and indigenous.”

 

AG: “I consider myself a “Chicana”, which means someone whose parents are Mexican but is born here. I learned this word in middle school, and ‘Chicana’ is a big culture in LA. ”

“Cactuses are super important in Mexico, they are on their flag and we eat them. And they also have a big influence on Aztec culture. On the flag, there are a cactus, an eagle and a snake. So on the flag, the eagle is standing on a cactus and with a snake in its snout. This has to do with the original myth of Aztec people. When they were trying to find a place to live, the god told them that once they find a eagle that was eating a serpent, that will be their holy land, the place that they were supposed to live in. They searched it and found the eagle, and the place they found it is now Mexico City. They built the empire because they saw the image. ”

“So when my mom says to me that “el nopal en la frenta”, it means that I look kind of indigenous. It’s like a criticism, it’s like you have a cactus on your forehand, you look Mexican, you look brown and indigenous, but you can’t even speak Spanish.’”

 

Context of the performance:

This is a section of the entire interview. AG told me the context of the proverb when she heard it. When she talks to her mom but can’t speak Spanish perfectly, or when she is not aware of certain Mexican history and culture, AG’s mom will say this proverb to her. Moreover, AG told me that this saying is only used between relatives or people who are really familiar to each other, so this will never appear in a conversation between two people just met.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

This is a saying always told from a older generation to a younger one, and especially, according to my informant, is prevalent in LA and being told to young people around her age. This reflects on the trend that younger generation of immigrants tends to lose the connection with indigenous culture and the older generation is the monitor to enhance the culture bonding.

No ivory is there in a dog’s mouth

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 47
Occupation: Artist
Residence: Beijing, China
Performance Date: March 26 2017
Primary Language: Chinese

Title:

My informant LWQ is a 47 years old Chinese artist. She was born and lived in southern part of China, especially Nanjing for many years before she moved to the north, Beijing at age 36.

The conversation is in Chinese.

 

Main piece:

Original script: “狗嘴里吐不出象牙。”

Phonic script: “gǒu zuǐlǐ tǔ bù chū xiàng yá.”

Transliteration: “No ivory is there in a dog’s mouth.”

Full translation: “A filthy mouth cannot utter decent language.”

Analysis on the script: Dog is a representation of badness, or vulgarity, while ivory symbolizes objects that are valuable and precious. This idiom is used to describe a person’s speech in sarcasm, that the words from this person are all truthless hogwash.

 

Context of the performance:

My informant LWQ was joking about a conversation between her and her husband. In a jocular manner, she described her husband’s words using this idiom, to express a disagree attitude in her husband’s words.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

It is very interesting that there are so many idioms, proverbs in Chinese about dogs, and without any exception, dogs carries negative meanings in all those folk pieces. In general, dogs represent inferiority, humbleness, degradation, and manifests people who are inferior in morality and status. However, at the same time, though folk pieces about dogs are all negative, they are used in a jocular manner, always being performed in joking, or playful satire. Moreover, I remember by grandmother always call me “狗东西” (phonic script: “gǒu dōng xī”, transliteration: “Dog thing”, translation: “doggie”) where dog is used in a term of endearment. It seems that there’s an ambiguous attitude toward dog among Chinese people.

Mascotgate

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/19/17
Primary Language: English

This was told to a group of friends while talking about funny or weird high school experiences.

“So at my high school, at the end of junior year, you pick a mascot, and the mascot is a mix of a pop culture figure and an animals, so like “Swanye West” or Swan F Kennedy, and i don’t know why those are both swans but those are easy, but um, uh, one time they did a movie, “Fight Cub”; “Moose Lee”, “mean squirrels”, um, and so you then you use them for your senior mascot and you get shirts based on that, and you also your yearbook will be entered on that, so when they did “moose lee” they made it look like an action movie, so like first people submit things and then we all vote on them, and the largest vote was “Genghis Kangaroo” like Genghis Khan and a kangaroo, um, and this had been submitted, and voted for number one, and it works like you vote for one and whatever gets the most votes wins, um, but then, oh yeah, so I was on term council which is like student council for each grade, and people were really mad, like I don’t want this, it can’t be Genghis kangaroo because I hate it but he’s also a mass-murderer, and like a pillager and a rapist, and we don’t want Genghis Khan representing us, and like all of those are obviously fair arguments, but like you could have said this at any point, like Genghis kangaroo could have been taken out at any point and we didn’t have to wait until it won, for then everyone to say why it’s fucked up? and then, we had a bunch of meetings at term council for what to do, what won the democratic vote, and there have always been rumours that it is a “termocracy” meaning that term council did shit without consulting the students and that we didn’t care about them, which was crazy because the meetings were open, so like anyone could come, so then you chose not come, and then we make decisions, and then you get mad about those decisions? so then we had a forum. and the forum on whether to like, like a forum to vote on whether we should re-vote and like take Genghis kangaroo out or go to the other high vote, and then on the high school meme page, there was a shit ton of memes, like conspiracy theory memes that were like, like “we’re going to have a forum to vote on whether to have re-vote a second forum for the first forum to vote on the third forum” and just like wrecking term, and like wrecking all the things that we were doing, because like what else do you want, because if we had just chosen ourselves and didn’t have a forum then they would have said “termocracy” but like when we had the vote on the revote they said this is nonsense and i think what ended up happening is that we had a forum and we just ended up going with the one which was the number two, which was TroutKast, which was a combination between Outcast the band and trout the animal, which was really good and everyone loved and  mascots were trout with the outkast costumes and then the yearbook got to be like a road trip, album tour type thing, like a cross-country tour. So it worked out.”

Analysis:

To me, what is most interesting about this story is the folklore that spread through the students through their “Meme page” as way of communication. The dubbing of the student council as a “termocracy” also shows the different levels of students and their awareness of the world, as if high school is like a much smaller country and the leaders are turning it into a dictatorship.