Category Archives: Folk speech

Kek

Nationality: Vietnamese American
Age: 23
Occupation: Freelance Illustrator
Residence: Fullerton, CA
Performance Date: 4/21/2015
Primary Language: English

“lel” is a common term used among people who frequent certain online imageboards. It is commonly used as schadenfreude in response to something bad happening to someone else, or some antic that elicits inappropriate laughter, implying the emitter of the laugh is a “troll.”

It has had a complicated history. The original acronym, “lol”, stood for “laugh out loud” and quickly replaced simulating laughter online. In the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft, there are two factions, Horde and Alliance. While their chat messages appear to each other while standing nearby in-game, the two factions cannot communicate with each other, which the server facilitates by running dialogue through a coder. When a Horde player types “lol” in chat, it appears to Alliance players as “kek,” which in itself is accepted as a sound made by silly laughter, especially when repeated (kekkekkekkek).

Soon, kek became itself used as to indicate inappropriate laughter, until it morphed back into “lel,” as k is next to l on the keyboard, and it also looks like a bastardation of “lol.”

There exists a type of Turkish snack food called “Topkek,” which the boards have since adopted as an higher-tier substitute for “kek.” Even this usage has now morphed into “Top lel” among groups of friends who have ventured deep enough into the imageboards.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 2/25/15
Primary Language: English

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

 

The informant was born and grew up in Hawaii before coming to the University of Southern California to achieve her undergraduate degree in Psychology. She is half Filipino and half Japanese.

 

She has heard this proverb many times, hither in books or advice that her parents gave her, and she has said it many times as well, and she has yet to encounter anyone who has not heard of this proverb. She reported this proverb after being asked what her favorite proverb is or what is the one that is used most often.

 

This proverb is generally explained in a story. If you are gathering eggs from your chickens, and put them all in one basket, then if you drop that basket, all of your eggs are gone. If you put the eggs in multiple eggs, you can drop one of the baskets, then you will still have other eggs to make an omelette. In other words, you must not put all of your hopes and rely entirely on just one option, because if that one thing fails, then you lose everything.

This can be applied to many different things. Stocks are a good example. This proverb recommends diversity of investments, so that if one stock does horribly, there is still money in other stocks to fall back on. It can also be used to advise apply to more than one job or college, because if you don’t get that one acceptance, then you are left with nothing.

This proverb advises always having a backup plan. This is a big idea in American culture, always having something to fall back on. This may be in large part due to the ambition of many Americans, constantly striving to be the best possible, to achieve the highest ranking, but if that is not possible, you don’t want to completely crash and burn. To prevent that, people have backup plans, something to fall back on, skills to all back on. This proverb supports this plan.

 

For another definition of this proverb, please see: “put all eggs in one basket.” Idioms by The Free Dictionary. Web. 30 April 2015. <http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/put+all+eggs+in+one+basket.>

“Just resting my eyes”

Nationality: American
Age: 84
Occupation: retired, former engineer
Residence: Iowa
Performance Date: April 19, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant :

So actually, “just resting my eyes”  when I’m taking a little nap, I actually got that from, do you remember, your great-uncle, Dennis?

Well his wife, Rita, she used to work at the hospital. And they have late shifts, sometimes. She was working 3:00 to 11:00 at night. So at night she would call him and say “Now Dennis, I’m driving home.”

In case… she had car trouble or just to have someone know where you are. And every time or almost every time, he’d be asleep when she got home.

So she woke him up and said, “You’re supposed to be listening for me!”

And Uncle Dennis said, “I heard you come in the drive. I was just resting my eyes.”

context: 

Papa, my grandfather, the informant, told me the story behind this family expression, over the phone after I explained to him and my grandma what I was looking for, in terms of folklore. I saw both of them over Easter. Papa takes at least one nap a day and if someone accidentally wakes him up he often says “I was just resting my eyes” to make them feel better or because he knows we think it is funny. The informant told me this one on one on the phone.

 

thoughts: 

It has become a family proverb, but started, ironically enough, as a well-worded excuse for negligence.

 

 

Informant 2, age 22, accountant

Another family expression that Papa always says and now I’ve heard the cousins say is “I’m just resting my eyes.” when they’re actually asleep. But I don’t know when that started.

 

 

One hundred steps

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Shanghai, China
Performance Date: 2/25/15
Primary Language: Chinese

“Basically, yeah, one of our common sayings is that if you, you know, walk, like, a hundred steps after you eat your food, it helps you live longer.”

 

The informant is a 19 year old, undergraduate student at the University of Southern California, studying accounting. He was born and lived in Shanghai, China for most of his life. He spent his high school years at a boarding school in Connecticut, before coming to college in California. He still spends his summers back in China, where he likes writing music and working on potential future business projects.

 

The informant was asked if there were any common sayings that he heard in China. He had heard this saying from his family, often after meals.

 

The Chinese are renowned for their medicine practices. They are largely responsible for what many call “holistic medicine” today—acupressure, acupuncture, and herbal remedies. They are very interested in health and have many folklore remedies, as a result. This particular one, of walking a hundred steps after one eats, is just another of such remedies. Exercise is always a good thing, and walking after a meal can help circulate the blood in the body.

Why 100 steps? Well, 100 is an important number in Chinese culture. On a baby’s 100th day, there is a large celebration. A hundred is also ten times ten. Ten is a holy number, as it is the sum of the first four numbers (1+2+3+4), and people have 10 fingers and 10 toes. Ten would be too few of steps to walk, so the Chinese say 100  to maintain the holiness of the numerical symbolism, while still making it a practical way to maintain health.

It is interesting that the Chinese, with this saying, have people exercise after they eat. In America, there is the saying that you should wait to swim until an hour after you have eaten. This is thought to protect from cramps, and therefore drowning. The Chinese would likely disagree with this way of thinking.

People don’t change

Nationality: American
Age: 40's
Occupation: Head Track and Field coach at USC
Residence: Los Angeles area
Performance Date: April 15, 2015
Primary Language: English

The informant was born and raised in Colorado. She all her life has used proverbs that her grandmother taught her to develop relationships. Her grandmother helped in assisting her by giving her proverbs to live by that apply to any situation and any human.

“A tiger can’t change its stripes”

Informant…

“My grandma would always tell me that a tiger cant change its stripes. By this she meant that a tiger will always have stripes, you can cover them up, you can shave them off, you can try and hide them, but the stripes will always be there. This connects to humans because it translates as a person can’t change, he can hide who he is, pretend he is someone else but he won’t ever change. This is important to know because if you meet some and you get a bad feeling from them or if down the road they do something in your relationship that disappoints you and shows you who they really are you have to realize that they can’t change who they are. This also is good to apply to yourself. When I was young and insecure about myself trying to be like everyone else and fit in, my grandma would tell me a tiger can’t change its stripes meaning that you are who you are and no matter how hard you try and change yourself, you can’t and you will always have your stripes.”

Analysis…

This proverb summarizes humans pretty well. A tiger can’t change its stripes is really important in our society because it seems like everyone is always trying to change themselves to be something they aren’t and hide who they are to fit in. This proverb reminds us that we are who we are and we can’t change it so we should embrace our stripes and our characteristics rather than covering up who we are and what makes us us. I think this proverb is inferring that we are all unique and shouldn’t try to hide who we are and our differences are good and should be appreciated. This is helpful in a society where the look is the most important thing, where you have to look and be a certain way to be accepted.

This proverb also summarizes how we should treat other people. It is normal for people to love everyone and to think the best about people, which is something I do, but when a person proves to you over and over that they are a certain way that means that is who they are. Good or bad, their action could be positive of negative but it is a reflection of who they are and it is important to know that a person can’t change because then we won’t expect something from that person that they can’t give us, and we can decide if that is the kind of person we want to be around.