Cross-Cultural Sayings and Proverbs

                      Sayings and proverbs are principles of life and provide guidance to our daily walk in areas of relationships with other human beings, physical nature such as animals and plants, spiritual phenomena and other non-spiritual elements in the universe.  What does sayings and proverbs reflect about culture? We can we learn about a people through its sayings and proverbs. Sharing these proverbs can be one way to learn about other cultures - their similarities and differences compared to ours.                          

                  Proverbs give us some encouragement and hope when we are weak and in despair and feel hopeless. Yet, each culture has sayings and proverbs that are unique to it. The saying, "If you want to know a people, know their proverbs" illustrates this. For example, sayings from various Native American tribes often reflect their view of the land as sacred: "Take only what you need and leave the land as you found it" and the importance of spirituality: "Wisdom comes only when you stop looking for it and start living the life the Creator intended for you." Japanese proverbs often refer to morals: "An evil deed remains with the evildoer" and discretion: "The tongue is like a sharp knife, it kills without drawing blood." Many Mexican proverbs reflect the thinking and values of rural people or the average person on the street and hope is a common theme: "Hope dies last of all." 

Intercultural sayings and proverbs include;

We really need to play hardball.
The members are keeping things close to the vest.
 Stone in the water-hole does not feel the cold. (Answers to our "Habit is second nature.")

He who has to carry does not walk bent.
The hunchback does not sleep on his back.
He, whose hand can meet no chair, sits on the ground.
A poor man can never become a priest.
He who is carried does not know how far the town is.

                         Proverbs are generally regarded as repositories of folk wisdom. As stylized sayings that presume to represent the commonsensical in everyday life, they are a topic of special interest for cultural models. The dictionary defines a proverb as "a short, pithy saying in frequent and widespread use, expressing a well-known truth or fact." Attention to just what "well-known truths" are, in fact, expressed by proverbs and how, cognitively and linguistically, they obtain their particular brand of meaning may provide some insight into the organization of cultural models that underlie them.
                               Proverbs are especially interesting because, like much of ordinary language, they accomplish both conceptual and pragmatic work. On the one hand, proverbs offer succinct ("pithy") descriptions of events. A familiar expression such as "It only takes one bad apple to spoil the barrel" brings a number of salient and well-known propositions about people and social life to bear on a particular person or situation. In doing so, this proverb provides an interpretation of specific actions or events in terms of a general, shared model. But proverbial sayings amount to more than economical descriptions. They are essentially concerned with morality, with evaluating and shaping courses of action and thus are frequently used in contexts of legal and moral implications.


courtesy:http://www.articlesbase.com/literature-articles/Author
Dr Alusine Melvin Moseray Kanu