Tag Archives: proverb

Salvadoran Proverb for Women

Nationality: Salvadoran
Age: 50
Occupation: Chief Building Engineer
Residence: North Hills, California
Performance Date: 04/20/17
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

“Las muchachas anda tan caliente, que cuando se orinen haste el sacate agarra fuego.”

Translation: Young girls are so hot (horny), then when they pee even the grass catches fire

This proverb was told to my informant by his wife. It represents the stigma that comes with women having free sexuality. it is usually told to daughters as a warning.

 

My informant is a building engineer. He migrated to the United States form El Salvador when he was 16 years old. He grew up in a city in El Salvador. Lots of the folklore he has heard has come from his family.

What is interesting is that this proverb really attack female sexuality. There is this idea in Salvadoran and most Hispanic culture that there are only two women; saints (women that are pure and do not have sexual urges) and whores (women that give into their sexual urges).

Albanian Proverb

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bronx, New York
Performance Date: March 17, 2017
Primary Language: English

Informant: The informant is Mrika. She has lived in the Bronx, New York for her whole life. She is eighteen years old and is a freshman at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. She is of Albanian descent.

Context:We sat across from each other at a table at a diner in Yonkers, New York during my spring break from college.

Original Script:

Informant: There’s a proverb that Albanians say. It goes, “When you have given nothing, ask for nothing.” So, it has a lot to say about respect in Albanian culture. We believe in returning favors and that, basically, you only get what you give. If you don’t give anything, you don’t get anything. It’s kind of like karma. I learned this from my dad. He was trying to teach me valuable lessons about appreciation and hard work .He taught me this when I was in middle school and I asked him for money. Like always, he had to turn this into a life lesson.

Interviewer: Why is this piece of folklore important to you?

Informant: It’s important because it taught me about not being greedy. You only get what you give. I feel like it’s so opposite of American culture. It reminds me not to be selfish. Honestly, so much Albanian folklore has that message.


Personal Thoughts: I think that it is fascinating to learn about the central messages of folklore of different cultures. I found it very interesting that Mrika said that much of her folklore is about not being selfish and making sure to return favors. The fact that their proverbs revolve around other people aside from themselves is admirable.

Difficult Difficult Lemon Difficult

Nationality: African-American (Ivory Coast/Scottish/Welsh)
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Shoreline, WA
Performance Date: 4/5/17
Primary Language: English

Context: My roommate discovered this meme one day, and it prompted a discussion about the various levels of depth it reached.

Background: My roommate is a self-described “conveyor of fine memes” and has a hobby of collecting, creating, and sharing Internet memes.

The Meme: The meme (attached to this post) is a play on the phrase “easy peasy lemon squeezy.” The phrased is reworked in a text explanation that laments the fact that things are not “easy peasy lemon squeezy” as once believed, but are in fact “difficult difficult lemon difficult.” This explanation is accompanied by the image of a middle-aged woman furiously gripping a laptop in both hands and biting into it.

Analysis: This became a folklore discussion as a surprise, as the further my roommate and I discussed it, the more it seemed to work as a piece of folk speech. “Difficult difficult lemon difficult” is definitely an evolution of the saying “easy peasy lemon squeezy,” which itself has an origin that feels meaningless in the context the phrase has since gained. The specific discovery of the newly-changed saying also has the context of being in meme form, memes being one of the more common areas of unauthored expression in the 21st century.

Fatherly Advice

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, OR
Performance Date: 3/13/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese (Mandarin)

Context: I collected this from a friend on a trip over Spring Break, after he’d heard me talking about folklore with another friend I was collecting from.

Background: A piece of advice in the form of a proverb my friend’s dad taught him to live by.

Phrase: The most important thing is to think. The second most important thing is let other people think.

Analysis: The piece is simple, really just some advice that’s important for parents to give to their kids. My friend specified this was something his father told him every time he “did something stupid,” but I appreciate that the proverb refers to the world beyond yourself and stresses the importance of respecting other peoples’ minds.

“Be good to your teeth, or they will be false to you.”

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Occupation: building contractor
Residence: Burlington, MA
Performance Date: 3/13/17
Primary Language: English

So what’s the meaning behind that?

 

Uh, I mean I think it’s just clever and funny.  If you aren’t good to your teeth, you’re gonna end up with false teeth.”

 

Ohh ok, now I get it

 

Oh my gosh!!  You didn’t get that!?  I think that one is so funny, so cute.

 

 

Conclusion:

 

This little saying is a short, clever play on words.  My Uncle Steve told me that his Aunt used to say this to him and his cousins all the time.  Apparently, she had taken poor care of her teeth as a child and young adult.  She started having to wear false teeth in her late 50s.  With this precautionary tale in mind, it comes as no surprise that my Uncle Steve has a nice, pearly white smile.  “I didn’t wanna end up with chompers like hers,” he jokingly says of his Aunt.