Category Archives: Folk speech

Scottish Expressions

Nationality: Scottish
Age: 77
Residence: San Pedro, CA
Performance Date: April 20th, 2015
Primary Language: English

My informant has a very interesting story. She is Scottish, but grew up primarily in England, near London. She moved to California with my Grandfather when my mother was 2 years old, back in the 1960s. Informant’s parents were both very Scottish, and she says it was often difficult to understand what they were saying. I remember when I met my great-grandmother, Elizabeth, it sounded as though she were speaking a different language.

Informant: “Oh! Great! Oh, Perfect! I know many expressions… I remember these well from when I lived there. You wouldn’t use them all the time, just certain occasions. Unless you were my Uncle Archie…” (I never did learn who Uncle Archie was)

Me: “Which do you remember?”

Informant:  “Hogmanay, and it’s… New Years was almost more important…So, on New Years Eve, people would go after midnight to someone’s house and you would take something with you, like short bread or pudding or whatever, and, but if you were dark haired you were welcome and if you were light-headed, you weren’t. So if nobody came to visit you at midnight, you had to make sure nobody with blonde hair crossed your threshold.

“Lang may yer lum reek” (Live long and healthy) is what they say on New Years. We lived in London and during the war it was impossible to celebrate but we would make short bread and my father would have a little whisky before bed on New Years. All of the sudden, this one year, we were awaked to the sound of bagpipes at one in the morning, and we lived up a little lane and my mother, we rush out. There is this piper walking up and he is playing “Scotland The Brave,” all the way to our house. And people who knew slightly, they knew we were Scottish and they decided to come first foot us, you know, the first foot over the threshold. The bag piper came in the house, with his wife, and stayed for half and hour or so. He gets his bagpipe and starts back up again. The neighbors loved it though! They started to look forward to it every year.”

Me: “Wonderful.”

Informant: “Here’s tae us! Wha’s like us? Damn few, an’ they ‘re a deid!”, which means, basically… Cheers! There’s no one like the Scots!” That one was my favorite.

Me: “Any others?”

Informant: “Weans wi’ big lugs tak it a’ in” (Watch what you say in front of children)… my mother used to say that. I remember, I used to think my parents were just using slang terms, but these…these are real Scottish words! Different from English. I even have a dictionary if you want to look up what they mean.” (I did)

 

 

 

Mexican Proverbs

Nationality: Italian/American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC off campus
Performance Date: April 27th, 2015
Primary Language: English

My informant used to travel a lot with her mother when she was younger. They have a home in Sayulita, Mexico, where my informant has been many times on vacation but when she was in 4th grade, she and her mother went to live there for the entire summer.

Informant: “I just remember a lot of these from when I lived there. Some of them are really funny. Like, I remember this one guy who was sitting on the street… We somehow got in conversation with him…he said something like, if a guy is too short for a girl it doesn’t matter because everyone is equal in bed. Something funny.”

Me: “Do you remember the actual sayings of any?”

Informant: “Oh yeah. Para tonto, no se estudia which means one needn’t study to become a fool. I actually bought a book, full of Mexican proverbs, like… Las conversacion es al pasto del alma….conversation is food for the soul. The book is at my mom’s house.”

 

 

A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned

Nationality: American
Age: 50s
Occupation: Banker
Residence: Shorewood, Minnesota
Performance Date: 4/26/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: None

Informant: “One thing that I remember my grandfather [S] saying to me multiple times, it was ‘[Informant’s name], a penny saved is a penny earned!’ And, so he grew up in the great depression, and that was some really tough times in America, and he saw all the hard things his parents had to do, and he as a kid had to do, and that caused people in his generation to feel like, if you find a way to save money, you know, not spend money you don’t need to spend, then that’s as good as earning extra money because that meant that you had that much money still available to you. I remember when I was little, we would go to California to visit him, and everyday they would be looking in the newspaper, cutting out coupons, looking for what the deal was, looking at the ads… basically figuring out everything for everything they were going to buy, where they were going to buy it from. If they were going to go out to dinner, they would make their dinner decision based off of who had a special, who had a coupon, who had a discount, those sorts of things, with the mindset of if they were going to spend money, but there’s a way to figure out how to spend less, then that’s just as good as making more money at your jobs. I find that I tend to think in the same way, where if I can figure out a way to spend less money, then it’s just like I just made more money from my job.”

Informant is a middle aged banker who frequently travels internationally on business, and is a father of three. He identifies as ‘American’, although his mother is of Czech heritage. He grew up in Oregon and Washington and currently lives in the Midwestern United States.

Collector Analysis: This particular proverb serves to provide financial advice, in this case the importance of spending money wisely. It is interesting how nowadays this particular proverb has almost a different meaning to it based on the fact that a penny today is considered to be nearly valueless, whereas in the time period where my informant first heard this proverb, pennies were not an insignificant amount of money. In this regard, the proverb may not have aged particularly well, but it is still a valuable piece of advice regardless.

You Don’t Start Catching Fish Until You Start Bleeding

Nationality: American
Age: 50s
Occupation: Banker
Residence: Shorewood, Minnesota
Performance Date: 4/26/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: None

Informant: “I know I’ve said this multiple times when I’m out fishing with someone, especially if we haven’t caught many fish yet, is ‘Welp, The reason we’re not catching any fish is because I’m not bleeding yet.’ Well, either ‘not bleeding’ or ‘haven’t hurt myself yet’. And if while I’m trudging along hiking to go somewhere fishing and I slip and fall and get all scuffed up or bruised or hurt or whatever, I think to myself, ‘ok, well now I’m going to catch fish because I’ve hurt myself’. And so these are things I’ve said many times over the years fishing, and I’d say that this is actually a true thing…most of the time. And part of the reason why this has ended up being a true thing is that you have a better chance of catching fish if you’re fishing in a part of the river that’s way harder to get to. Because, the average person is probably a little bit lazy, and they’re also not going to take risks. And so if you drive up to some spot and you get out of your car and you walk right down to the river and fish there, that’s probably where like a million people have fished. But if you’re like walking up the narrow steep river canyon, or trying to go down some spot where there’s not a path, and just try to go cross country to get to the river, if it’s really hard to get there, then hardly anyone or perhaps no one has fished there before. When you get to those spots, and I’ve been to a number of those spots in my life, the fishing can be just absolutely fantastic.

Informant is a middle aged banker who frequently travels internationally on business, and is a father of three. He identifies as ‘American’, although his mother is of Czech heritage. He grew up in Washington and Oregon (where he hopes to someday retire so he can “go fly fishing every single day for the rest of [his] life”) and currently lives in the Midwestern United States.

Collector Analysis: In much the same way as there is folklore associated with different professions, there is also folklore associated with different hobbies; in this case, fly fishing. This particular proverb is interesting in that it implies a sort of balance in nature, and that everything has a cost. Specifically, if you want to catch fish, you have to prove that you really want them by bleeding a little. Of course, the informant’s explanation as to why this particular piece of wisdom is more correct than not is spot on. Also, humans tend to have an interesting relationship with pain. This collector has experienced independent times in which, when receiving a mild injury while performing a task, will think ‘well, I knew I was going to injure myself while performing this task, and now that I’ve injured myself, I don’t have to worry about it anymore. This particular piece of folklore is very probably just an extension of a similar chain of thought.

Respect your Siblings

Nationality: Vietnamese
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/27/2015
Primary Language: Vietnamese
Language: English

Informant: “When I went to temple school a long time ago when I was a lot younger, we always learned a bunch of sayings and proverbs, or… I’m not sure what the difference is in English. But a very common one which I’ve had used on me a lot was

‘Anh em như thể tây chân’

which means

‘siblings are like your limbs’

The idea was if you were fighting with you brother or sister, they would say this to remind you that, you know, you’re stuck with your siblings so you might as well get along with them. Like, if you’re angry at your arm you wouldn’t just cut off your arm you just deal with it, or if your leg is hurting you, you just deal with it. In the same same way, if you’re angry with your siblings, you can’t just try to cut yourself off from them.”

Informant is a student at the University of Southern California. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Vietnam after the Vietnam war. She was born in the United States, and was raised bilingually by her parents (though she says that Vietnamese “Is definitely [her] primary language at home”). Most of her knowledge of Vietnamese culture comes from her upbringing in he Vietnamese family in an area where a lot of immigrants from Vietnam settled. Additionally, when she was growing up, she learned a lot about her Vietnamese heritage through “Temple School” which she described as “Like Christian Boy Scouts, except for Vietnamese Buddhists”.

Collector Analysis: According to the informant, Vietnamese culture places an extremely large value on respect and family. This proverb is a clear example of this as it both shows the importance of one’s siblings, as they are just as important as your arms and legs, and it explains the importance of working together with your siblings. In much the same way as you need all of your limbs, you need your siblings and your family in life.