Category Archives: Folk speech

To See Is To Believe

Nationality: Korean
Age: 24
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/30/15
Primary Language: Korean

My informant is a 24-year-old foreign exchange student who was raised in South Korea his whole life.

I asked my informant if he had any proverbs that he could share with me. I was curious to see what I could learn about Korean culture by hearing his proverbs. I was surprised by the first proverb that came to his mind. He told me that this proverb is very popular in Korea and is widely used.

Informant: “The proverb is, “to see is to believe”. This is what it means in Korean, but if you translate to English it means more like, “Watching one time is better than listening 100 times. And it just means that I can tell you something 100 times and you will not understand until I actually show it to you. It also can mean to not trust the words until you see the action”.

Analysis: I thought this was really interesting because the first proverb that he told me was something that I have heard many times in America. This proverb is not limited to just Korea. It was also interesting that the Korean version is close to the English version, if not the exact same, while the translation offers a different reading. The meanings are very close but the translation seems to have a more direct connotation.

Nothing Riddle

Nationality: Lithuanian, english, russian, dutch
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/30/15
Primary Language: English

My informant is a 19-year-old college student who grew up in Chicago, Illinois, then moved out to California where she now attends the University of Southern California. Both her parents are from a Jewish background and her ethnicity is Dutch, Russian, Lithuanian, and English.

I asked my informant if she could provide me with any riddles. She quickly perked up and gave me the first one that came to her head which also was her favorite:

Riddle: What’s greater than god, more evil than the devil, poor people have it, rich people need it, and if you eat it you will die.

I sat and guessed a lot of ridiculous things as she smiled at me. I had a feeling it was going to be one of those answers I was not going to like, and low and behold I was right.

Informant: “Do you give up? The answer is nothing. Nothing is greater than god, nothing is more evil than the devil, rich people need nothing, poor people have nothing, and if you eat nothing you will die”

I was not very pleased with the answer, but I think this is the reason of the riddle. It is the same idea behind young children telling riddles. They have an answer to something that they know you will most likely not guess. This knowledge of some unknown gives them a sense of power over the older adult that they are talking to and this creates an element of humor for children.

Informant: “I learned it a long time ago, probably when I was in middle school. Like anything else, I learned it from a friend and then went on to stump all of my friends who then probably went on to stump their friends. I definitely told it to my parents at some point and got a lot of enjoyment out of fooling them”.

Riddles such as this one are considered humorous in some ways because the answer is not apparent. The unknown answer creates this humor and the big reveal of the answer to the unexpected guesser acts almost as a punch line to a joke.

DWAI — Don’t Worry About It

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 28
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Background on informant: Informant is a senior at USC, studying philosophy, politics and law. He is from New York City.

Informant: There’s this abbreviation I use with some of my friends. It’s DWAI and stands for “Don’t Worry About It.” My friend claims to have invented this abbreviation herself, and I’ve never heard it anywhere else so I totally believe her. She’s made up other types of acronyms like that so I totally believe it was originally her thought.

EXAMPLES:

“I haven’t really studied that much for this test but DWAI, I’m sure it will turn out OK.”

“Oh you spilled your drink on me. Just DWAI.”

It’s just sort of a fun saying to pepper your conversations with because it really rolls off the tongue because it’s a good life motto.

Analysis: This piece of folklore was especially interesting to me because I had heard the informant say it on many prior occasions and I noticed that I had started to spontaneously intersperse it in my own speech, from time to time. I think this folklore is really inventive but also very reflective of the culture. The informant noted that he and his friend like to use abbreviations and I think that is a larger trend in a generation that relies heavily on informal text communication. It is interesting then to see how that written form of communication is transferred to being folklore. The same perhaps could be said for other abbreviations, like IRL.

 

“Be tough about it”

Background on informant: Informant is a senior at USC, studying international relations. She is involved in many student organizations,

Informant: My father played soccer forever so he’s always tough about anything pain-related. He has a very high pain tolerance. Regardless, as a kid when there was anything wrong, he would say, “be tough about it.” That’s the phrase for everything. You get hurt, etc… He would hit you in the forehead in a joking way and that was a distraction from whatever thing it was. It could be literally anything if we were complaining. I say it to other people. Now it’s like a phrase.

Analysis: I found this piece of folklore to be compelling because it sheds light on how folklore is performed, taught, habituated to a certain extent and passed down. The informant, who does not have as high of pain tolerance as her father, is told again and again to tough it out when there is a problem and now it’s a folk saying that she reports performing when in the company of others. I also thought it was interesting that the informant has such a personal connection and personal associations, the way she talks about how her father interacts (jokingly hitting her forehead), for a phrase that is somewhat banal and self-evident. It suggests that this piece of folklore, in addition, to serving a person in social interactions is also personal and connects her to the person who first performed it for her.

When journeying in Russia…

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 29
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

Background on informant: Informant is a senior at USC, studying international relations. He is from the Bay Area and lived and studied in Russia for a year.

He told me about a proverb he heard from multiple people about how to prepare for a journey in Russia. He can’t remember exactly who he heard this from but said he heard it from multiple sources.

Transcript:

“Otpravlyayas v dalniy poot, vzya butilku ne zabud.”

In English: “When you’re going on a journey don’t forget to bring a bottle.”

Analysis: This proverb is interesting because it requires the receiver to have some working knowledge of the Russian culture and perhaps stereotypes to understand that when they mean “bottle,” they don’t mean bottle of water but a bottle of alcohol. At first, I even thought it could have two meanings, depending on the audience, but the informant, who said he might not have been sober when he first heard it, said that it is specifically talking about a bottle of alcohol. It’s not the most weighty proverb in the world, perhaps, but it is definitely a proverb that would tell you something about the culture, its stereotypes, and the person delivering the proverb.