My informant is my mother. She is 53 years old and is Spanish, Croatian, and Yugoslavian. She was born and raised in Florida, but keeps up many of her ancestors’ traditions from these countries.

My mother really enjoys the culture in Spain. She has traveled there on a few occasions and loves to soak up the culture. She learns a lot about the country every time she goes and she gets to see the places that her ancestors came from. I asked her if she had any Spanish proverbs that she has learned from her parents or her grandparents.

Informant: “I remember one proverb or motto that was brought up many times. It basically goes, “We (Spanish people) work to live, we do not live to work”. Spanish people live much simpler lives than people do in many places in the world, especially the United States. I first heard this saying or proverb from my grandmother. My mother was raised in the United States and although she was raised by my grandmother, my mother has seemingly adopted a much more American view on work and never really used this proverb with me. I can understand why people say it in Spain, but it doesn’t really apply in America. Here it is the exact opposite, everything is a rat race to the top to see who can make the most money and although it isn’t a good thing, if you don’t keep up, you will get left behind”.

Analysis: I thought this proverb was interesting because it says something about an entire country and their views on work ethic. It also shows a nice contrast between America and a country like Spain. The ideals in each country are pretty much the exact opposite. Where in America, “the early bird gets the worm”, and other proverbs like this promote the idea that if you work harder than the guy next to you, then you will succeed past him and make more money. It seems as if every country has proverbs like these. These proverbs not only shift a way of thinking but they tend to shape an entire country’s perspective. People follow these proverbs and they become instilled in the way that they live and guide a way of living for people.

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.

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.