Learning culture through proverbs

Learning culture through proverbs
According to Samovar in nearly every culture, proverbs-communicated in colorful, vivid languages and with very few words- offer an important set of values and beliefs for members of the culture. They also reflect the wisdom, biases, and even superstitions of a culture. Proverbs go by many names (such as maxims, truisms, and even sayings), yet they all are intended to carry the truths and
accumulated insights of the culture. Proverbs are so important to the learning process that there is even a German proverb that notes, "A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs." [1,p235].
Proverbs are learned easily and repeated with great regularity. Because they are brief (a line or two), their power as a teacher is often overlooked. These proverbs survive so that each generation learns what a culture deems significant. As Sellers tells you, "proverbs reunite the listener with his or her ancestors". Samovar also mentions that because all people, regardless of their culture, share common experiences, many of the same proverbs appear throughout the world. For example, in nearly every culture respect to friendship and hate to enmity is stressed. Hence in England the proverb states Old friends and old wine are best the proverb states. In the Uzbek language people told, "Kiyimning yangisi yaxshi, Do’stning eskisi." (in English: New is better in clothing, old is better in friends) Because silence is valued in Japan and China, a Japanese proverb says, "The quacking duck is the first to get shot". In addition to numerous universal proverbs, there are also thousands of proverbs that each culture uses to teach lessons that are unique to that particular culture.
Roy offers a summary as to why the understanding of cultural proverbs is a valuable tool for students of intercultural communication. "Examination of these orally transmitted values offers an excellent means of learning about another culture because the oft-repeated sayings fuse past, present, and future. These sayings focus our attention on basic principles accepted within the culture."
Yet, each culture has proverbs that are unique to it. The saying, 'If you want to know a people, know their proverbs' illustrates this. For example, mentions "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". English 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".
Through the analysis of property of culture and proverb, it can be known that proverb can help one to understand a culture. The way proverb reveals culture diversity can be connected with the patterns of value dimension, which conveys the information of a culture’s deep meaning. From the perspective of uncertainly avoidance, it can be seen that although English and Uzbek both are low-uncertainly avoidance cultures, they mainly have different life attitudes, because that Americans put more emphasis on competition. From the perspective of high-context and low-context, the text provides the concepts of non-verbal communication and two layers of meaning of silence. And under this background, the paper analyzes several culture patterns, especially English and Uzbek. From the perspective of power-distance, it reveals the different views on equality between English and Uzbek, and analyzes the reasons of culture tradition. However, although culture diversity mainly reveals the culture difference, there are common aspects between cultures.
A lot of efforts have been made towards the role of proverbs in intercultural communication study. And among all the papers and books which are written to reveal the relationship between proverbs and cultures, much more emphasis were put upon the role f proverbs either in the sphere of comparative study between two specific cultures or the translation field, while there is relatively few study on the general role of proverbs in revealing culture diversity. This paper tries to show the role of proverbs in revealing cultures. Thus it provides perspective to know the specific characteristics in different cultures and may stimulate the interests of people who are curious in culture diversity and get a better way in cross-cultural communication.
The word culture has numerous meanings. An early definition was provided by E.B.Tylor(1967. 245рр), who treated culture as a complex whole of social traditions and as prerequisite for one to be a member of the society. Culture can be a set of fundamental ideas, practices, and experiences of a group of people that are symbolically transmitted generation to generation through a learning process. Culture may as well refer to beliefs, norms, and attitudes that are used to guide one’s behaviors and to solve human problems. Moreover, one can look at culture from an interpretative and performance perspective by viewing it as a system of expressive practices and mutual meanings associated with one’s behaviors.
Although the concept of culture seems complex, culture is learned. And because human behavior is culturally biased, culture deals with the way people live; all need to do is learning culture through different elements or aspects of culture.
In conclusion the functions of English proverbs are that they express some rules of conduct and quite often convey some advice or counsel. In other words, most English proverbs possess philosophic depth or instructive function. For thousands of years they have been instructing and inspiring English people, so they have been regarded as the guideline of people's thoughts and deeds, which means English people are thinking or doing things by following the direction of their proverbs either consciously or unconsciously. English proverbs have become important sources of inspiration just because they contain truth, wisdom counsel, and rule of conduct.
Used Literature
1.Dubrovin M.V. “A book of English and Russian proverbs and sayings”-235рр
2.Taylor A. The Proverb. “Harvard University Press”, 1967. – 245 pp
Internet Sites

1. 
   www.thesaurus.com/browse/proverb
   
2. 
   www.cogweb.ucla.edu/Discourse/Proverbs/English.html