Category Archives: Proverbs

Indonesian Proverb

Nationality: American
Age: 26
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Primary Language: English
Language: Indonesian

The informant was my cousin (referred to as LG) who spent 4 years being a Fulbright scholar in Indonesia. There she was teaching school girls English and art. She told me this proverb which she had heard from one of the host families she was staying with. My cousin got very sick and had a horrible fever and while her host family was taking care of her this:

 

LG: “I heard this proverb when I was really sick and had a fever of 104 degrees. It was rainy season and things were flooding and it was horrible and then I got terribly sick. My host family said, ‘Alah bisa karena biasa,’ which roughly translated to ‘One gains immunity against poison when exposed to it regularly.’”
This obviously is meant to be interpreted as “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I think it is interesting they told my cousin this when she was really sick, as if perhaps they were saying she was weak for getting sick due to the flooding, because they had not fallen ill. Perhaps they felt they were immune to the sickness because they “were exposed to the poison regularly.” I believe this idea probably stems from living in poverty and for the most part, when something goes wrong there might not be a lot you can do about it, so it is a positive way to look at any negative situation. Essentially, you’re building immunity for the next time something bad happens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You don’t ask, you don’t get” Proverb

Nationality: American
Age: 56
Occupation: Excecutive Search
Residence: Mill Valley, CA
Performance Date: April 15, 2018
Primary Language: English

Main piece:

“You don’t ask, you don’t get.”

Background:

Informant is a mother of three living in Mill Valley, California. She was raised in a family of 10 children and a single mother in Key Biscayne, Florida.

Context:

I asked the informant if she knew any proverbs, and her response was this saying that she always tells her children.

Commentary:

The informant came up with this proverb to teach her children the power of simply asking, as opposed to going through life passively. She is a firm believer that if you are polite and persistent, good things will follow. There are many proverbs containing the same general meaning, but the informant likes the streamlined effect of the repetitive nature of this saying.

British Dite

Nationality: British
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 22, 2018
Primary Language: English

Main piece:

“Don’t be silly, wrap his willy!”

Background:

Informant is a first year student at the University of Southern California who grew up in Henley on Thames, England. 

Context:

I asked the informant if she had any sayings, and this was her response.

Commentary:

The informant uses this dite as a joke whenever one of her friends is going to be alone with a boy, even if they do not have a sexual relationship. There are definitely many forms of this saying in other cultures, and it is interesting to see how the different shorthands for words lead to different rhymes, and therefore different phrases as a whole.

 

Vietnamese Proverb

Nationality: Vietnamese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: March 30, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Vietnamese

RN is the informant, PH is myself.

PH: Do you know any legends, jokes, proverbs that you especially like?

RN: Proverb?

PH: Yeah

RN: Can it be in another language?
PH: Yes

RN: I’ll give you the English translation and you can just write [that it is a] Vietnamese proverb

PH: Do you know how to spell it?

RN: [says the proverb in Vietnamese]

PH: I’ll let you spell it.

RN: It means there’s nothing like fish and rice, there’s nothing like mother and child.

The actual proverb in Vietnamese is:

“Không có gì bằng cơm với cá, không có gì bằng má với con.”

Translations of this proverb vary, and this translation was off the top of the informant’s head. The informant speaks Vietnamese, as it is the language primarily spoken in his home, but not at an advanced level.

For another instance of this proverb, see Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong.

 

Persian Proverb

Nationality: Vietnamese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: March 30, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi/Persian

RN is the informant, PH is myself. Our conversation began as follows:

PH: Do you know any legends, jokes, proverbs that you especially like?

RN: Proverb?

PH: Yeah

RN: Can it be in another language?
PH: Yes

The informant then told me of a Vietnamese proverb which is documented in a different entry. Afterward, the conversation continued:

RN: A Persian one I really like is… My friend taught me how to say it…
[says in persian], [it means that] the walls have mice and the mice have ears.

The proverb in Farsi/Persian is:

دیوار موش داره٬ موش هم گوش داره

The phonetic spelling is:
divār muš dāre, muš ham guš dāre

The informant was taught this proverb, both its pronunciation and its translation, by a friend he went to high school with who immigrated to the U.S. (Irvine, CA) from Iran at age 6.