Proverbs: The Key to Understanding a Language/Culture
"Don't judge a book by its cover.""The early bird catches the worm.""Practice makes perfect." We have heard these types of sayings at least a gazillion times in our lives and we understand the meaning of these sayings pretty well but did you know that these sayings can define a culture?
Proverbs reveal many aspects about the cultural traditions of a society. Proverbs originated from indigenous humble folk who handed down these wise sayings over the centuries, generation to generation.Many proverbs serve as advisory tales. wise advice, and occasionally chastisement, thus these are the sayings that can define a culture and what it values. Let's take a look at the three proverbs above and analyze what these mean in the greater context of American culture.
1)"Don't judge a book by its cover.": This may be one of the most used sayings since its inception. People most often use this saying literally,
but in a sense it can also define our outlook on people. Almost every joke I see/hear about black people involve either crime, slavery, or fried chicken. Asians (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese ect.) are smart at math, can't drive cars for s*it, and that they eat cats, dogs, and snakes (which is somewhat true...). Indians worship cows, drive taxis and tend to smell like curry 24/7 (We can't help it if we like it. For those of you who haven't tried it yet, your missing out on something amazing). Middle Easterners can't help but know everything and anything there is to know about bombs and coincidentally they all happen to be Muslim. Hispanics are mostly illegal immigrants who are stealing the jobs of white people. And last but not least there are the white people. These over weighted, sport obsessed, money hungry idiots are ignorant of the world outside of their own. What do these generalizations say about our own culture. Within this topic there exists religious racism and sexism. This proverb is meant to overlook all of these generalizations and accept a person as a human being, not by what they practice or how they live their lives. This quote is meant to encompass a diverse America. Since the very beginning, America is the land of the free. People from anywhere are welcomed to practice what ever they want without being stopped. Everybody who lives in America is an American, and you can never talk away our rights. If you happen to do so, we will come back and sue your a*s into the next century!
*The explanations of the other 2 proverbs will follow in the next blog or two. Thanks for reading :)
I think that your idea that proverbs are very much related to the culture of a society is very true in the sense of the proverb above. We do tend to generalize about others especially in America in an attempt to generally give ourselves an idea about one another. The interpretation of the book cover proverb is very true in America but I wonder how this proverb is viewed from the perspective of people in different countries or if they have this exact proverb at all.
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