English and Vietnamese proverbs (Ms Nguyen)
What is God's will for my life? How can I be a wiser Christian? What should I teach my children? What is wrong with this generation? How can I be happy and successful? What kind of woman should I marry? How can I defeat sexual temptation? Why do I have money problems? What are the priorities of a godly life? How should I treat others? How can I get ahead on the job?
Dear reader, perfect answers to these and other questions are here in Proverbs!
[The Proverbs of Solomon]
We wonder whether there are any exaggerations in the above statement, but the great value proverbs have brought to our life, proves this truth.
As Wolfgang Mieder (2004) stated, the wisdom of proverbs has guided people in their social interactions for thousands of years throughout the world. Proverbs contain everyday experiences and common observations in concise and formulaic language, making them easy to remember and ready to be used instantly as effective rhetoric in oral or written communication. This has been the case during preliterate times and there are no signs that proverbs have outlived their usefulness in modern technological societies either [34, p. xi].
There are sometimes claims that proverbs are on their way to extinction in highly developed cultures but the truth has shown the opposite. While some proverbs have dropped out of use because their message or metaphor does not fit the times any longer, new proverbs that reflect the mores and situation of the present are constantly added to the proverbial repertoire. Thus the sixteenth-century proverb "Let the cobbler stick to his last" is basically dead today since the profession of the cobbler has disappeared. The proverb expressed the idea that one should stick to the work or field in which one is competent or skilled. As this text based on a specific profession which is lost, the general proverb "Every man to his trade" might be used, although at a clear loss in metaphorical expressiveness. On the other hand, new proverbs have come to life as a result of mankind's development. As in the world of computers, we might come across such recent vintages as "There's no place like home.com," "Know what to expect before you connect," "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks," and in social life "A closed mouth gathers no feet," "Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity," or "Eat well, stay fit, die anyway." In any case, proverbs are indeed alive and well and continue to play an important role in the modern age.
As can be seen, of the various forms of folk literature such as popular songs, nursery rhymes, popular satirical verses, riddles, fairy tales... proverbs have the most organic relationship with people's everyday speech. They are set expressions because of their constant and stable lexical components and their meaning is usually figurative and they are ready-made units as well. Not only good writers but also ordinary people therefore can easily use proverbs in everyday life. As Gorki (1937) had it, they (including idioms) are natural ways in which speech develops [14, p. 179], so we often hear such things like "We decided to (1) let the sleeping dog lie and not take them to court." And Charles Dickens in "Dombey and Son" made a simile using a proverb "As (2) the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of underground information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr. Dombey"[14, p. 25]. And the cover article of The Youth newspaper dated September 8, 2007 read: Bức tranh tuyển sinh nguyện vọng 2: (3) Kẻ ăn không hết, người lần không ra. Trong khi các ngành thời thượng như kinh tế, ngân hàng, quản trị kinh doanh... nườm nượp thí sinh nộp đơn xét tuyển nguyện vọng 2, thì các ngành xã hội hết sức thưa thớt.
Those proverbs (1), (2), (3) contain both literal and figurative (metaphorical) meanings but the latter predominates in all three cases, where the actual contexts help correctly understand the speaker or writer's intention. Not all but most proverbs contain a metaphor, among them such common texts as "A watched pot never boils", "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," and "Birds of a feather flock together." The preference for metaphorical proverbs lies in the fact that they can be employed in a figurative or indirect way as verbal folklore in general is based on indirection. By associating an actual situation with a metaphorical proverb, the particular matter is generalized into a common occurrence of life. Instead of scolding someone directly for not behaving according to the cultural customs of a different social or cultural setting, one might indirectly comment that "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." And the proverb when used in an appropriate situation can be worth a thousand words as it is didactic and image bearing.
Apart from the multiple meanings that come to light only in particular situations, proverbs often take advantage of grammatical and rhetorical devices that help make them memorable. Many of them exhibit certain stylistic features that enable a statement to gain and maintain proverbial status (Blehr 1973) [23]. Shirley Arora (1984) summarized them in her seminal article on "The Perception of Proverbiality", including alliteration: "Practice makes perfect," "Forgive and forget"; parallelism: "Ill got, ill spent," "Nothing ventured, nothing gained"; rhyme: "A little pot is soon hot," "There's many a slip between the cup and the lip"; and ellipsis: "More haste, less speed," "Deeds, not words." Besides these external features, there are also internal ones that add to the rhetorical effectiveness of proverbs, namely hyperbole: "All is fair in love and war," "Faint heart never won fair lady"; paradox: "The longest way around is the shortest way home"; personification: "Love will find a way," "Hunger is the best cook"; and metaphor: proverbs are often used metaphorically and it is in understanding their metaphorical nature that we can make clear their meanings. While "A stitch in time saves nine" and "Don't count your chickens before they are hatched" are common proverbs, few of us stitch clothes or count chickens.
As far as proverbs go, there are literally thousands of proverbs in every culture and language of the world. They have been collected and studied for centuries as informative and useful linguistic signs of cultural values and thoughts and with such a wealth of proverb collections, proverb scholars consider paremiography (collection of proverbs) to be one side of the coin of proverb studies.
The other side is referred to as paremiology (study of proverbs) which also has a long history. In contrast to paremiographers, who occupy themselves with the collecting and classifying of proverbs, the paremiologists address such matters as the definition, form, structure, style, content, function, meaning, and value of proverbs.
How come such tremendous attention has been paid to proverbs with numerous painstaking works, carried out by wholeheartedly dedicated scholars? The root lies in the fact that for every nation, proverbs (part of folk literature) are exactly the mirror reflecting its people. Therefore, to understand a certain people, it is highly recommended that we learn about its proverbs, where we can discover that people's character, psychology, feelings and innermost heart.
Nowadays, in the process of world development and global integration, people's need of acquiring at least a second language- English as a priority, and the matter of cross-culture between nations require us, as teachers of English, to pay much more attention to this field, in order to deliver the true spirit of the language to our learners for their sake.