There’s No Need To Hurry

By Patricia Winton

Italian has lots of proverbs common to English and other languages. A caval donato non si guarda in bocca, for example, translates perfectly as “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” And Batti il ferro finché è caldo literally means “Strike while the iron is hot.”

Other expressions have different literal meanings with the same result. A chi dai il dito si prende anche il braccio translates to “Give them a finger and they’ll take an arm.” In English that, of course, means “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.” Chi dorme non piglia pesci means “Those who sleep don’t catch any fish” which in English is “The early bird gets the worm.”

But my favorite expressions are those that relate directly to the Italian way of life. I recently learned a new one, and it’s so central to life here that I now see it everywhere I turn: Non ci corre dietro nessuno. Literally, it means “There’s no one running behind us.” In reality it means “What’s your hurry.”

This attitude both enrages me sometimes with Italian people who never seem to rush (except on the highway) and endears them to me because they know how to enjoy life. Last week, I fumed in the supermarket checkout line while my frozen foods defrosted on the conveyer belt. The cashier continued his conversation with the customer ahead of me whose purchases were bagged and whose change was stowed in her purse. My American impatience had smoke coming out my ears, but all the customers behind me chatted with each other. I had to take a deep breath and repeat: Non ci corre dietro nessuno.  Everybody’s enjoying themselves. Relax.

And that leads me to another proverb: Dove c'è gusto non c'è perdenza, that is, where there’s enjoyment, there’s no loss. It’s this attitude toward life that keeps me living here. It’s better for my blood pressure if I keep reminding myself not to hurry and to enjoy myself. The final proverb for the day:

“È meglio morire sazio che digiuno.” It’s better to die sated than on an empty stomach. I think that’s so much better than “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die. I’m too much an American to completely adopt this Italian zest for life, but I appreciate it and try to alter my attitudes and behavior to match it.

Horse Horse, Tiger Tiger―A Menagerie of Chinese Sayings

By Beth Green

When I moved to China, I half expected my English students to come out with proverbs as soon as they opened their mouths.

After all, China’s rich literary heritage goes back thousands of years―while we in English-speaking countries dabble with our Beowulf, marveling at the ‘old’ English that was spoken in 700 CE, we should remember that Chinese scholars have been compiling their own literary classics since around 700 BCE.

Seeing though, that I would at first be teaching six-year-olds, I quickly realized that I’d have to look elsewhere for my pearls of wisdom (even if they were strewn before swine such as I). But, still I had grand expectations of one day luxuriating in normal things spoken cryptically―grains of wisdom in everyday conversations.

Image by Ian Lamont from  harvardextended.blogspot.com

I waited, and waited, and finally came to the realization that, unlike in many films, Chinese people don’t go around translating their own language’s proverbs into their second language and using them. This may have something to do with the way most Chinese students learn English―rote memorization of set phrases. Instead, my English-speaking Chinese friends were asking me about how hard it would have to rain before it would be considered ‘cats and dogs,’ and wondering why a ‘stitch in time’ didn’t save ten, only nine.

In fact, I didn’t have much exposure to Chinese proverbs at all until my second year in China, when my school assigned me a new Mandarin teacher. (One of the perks of teaching abroad is that often you can work free language classes into your employment package.)

Serena and I eventually became very good friends, but in the beginning our Chinese lessons were rough going. We’d sit in a deserted classroom, two plastic kid-sized desks edged next to each other, going over Chinese character stroke order, drilling pin yin (pronunciation) and working our way through tedious, canned dialogues from my textbook―which usually revolved around landmarks in Beijing. Now, I do find the capital of China an interesting place, but it was about 1,000 miles away, and the lessons on subway systems, tourist attractions and big-city problems were hardly relevant in the small town I did live in.

After a few weeks of boring ourselves to death, Serena came to class with a thick, dusty, red-covered book she said her father had recommended. It was a book she’d learned from too, when she was a student― a dictionary of sayings, or cheng yu, 成语, many of which were only four characters long.

I was at once both pleased and terrified―finally I was ready to learn something that was more fun than functional―but at the same time, if it was still proving difficult to go to the post office in Mandarin, how was I going to get my tongue (and my memory) around these, more poetical, set phrases?

Chinese speakers have used cheng yu (which are best described as idioms rather than proverbs, though they often impart wisdom as would a proverb) for thousands of years. Some dictionaries have about 20,000 of these linguistic gems, but Wikipedia estimates that only about 5,000 of them are in popular use.

The first saying I learned (and probably the first idiom most Mandarin students learn) was ma ma hu hu (马马虎虎),or literally, “horse horse, tiger tiger.”

Image by Andrew Scott

The meaning however, is closer to English’s wishy-washy “so-so.” How did the phrase come to mean this? A story I’ve heard is that in a bad (or so-so) painting you may come across something that’s not quite a horse, and not quite a tiger.

From this I went on to learn more sayings made up of easy words. I was thrilled the first time I found one of the sayings in real life and not in the textbook. It is a typical phrase well-wishers say at a wedding: Bai nian hao he (百年好合), meaning ‘may you live a hundred years together.’ I discovered some of the ornamental chopsticks I’d purchased for my apartment were engraved with this saying―unknowingly I’d picked up a wedding set!

I dearly love Chinese sayings with animals in them. One that a friend told me recently is this Animal Farm-esque proverb, “Kill the monkey to scare the chickens” or sha ji gei hou kan (杀鸡给猴看). It means to punish someone as a warning to others.

Another saying featuring monkeys is this one that immediately conjures a comical mental image: “a monkey wearing a hat,” or mu hou er guan (沐猴而冠). This has a more serious meaning than I first guessed though―it connotes a bad or worthless person who hides behind their good, or imposing, looks. 

 

Image by Ganesh Rao

My love of crime fiction probably explains why I also delight in the next two sayings, which have a sinister tone. My all-time favorite of these proverbs describes backstabbers: “Honey mouth, sword belly,” or kou mi fu jian (口蜜腹剑). Another good one is xiao li cang dao (笑里藏刀), meaning, “a dagger concealed in a smile.”

As much as I love reading about and learning these expressions, I admit that I’ve never used anything other than ma ma hu hu in an actual conversation. My Chinese has never improved to the point that I could imperil my already fragile and haphazard syntax by throwing in an aphorism.

In fact, you could say that, as far as my Mandarin language skills go, “the rice has already cooked,” sheng mi zhu cheng shu fan (生米煮成熟饭).

Carrying Cumin to Kerman

By Heidi Noroozy

Ever since my college days, I’ve collected proverbs, those metaphorical sayings that express a universal truth. It all started because one of my German professors who’d specialized in folklore brought his love of these sayings into the classroom. He had us collect examples of proverbs and their representations in art and popular culture, and when we stumbled over points of grammar and hard-to-remember vocabulary, he’d urge us to keep trying. “Aller guten Dinge sind drei,” he’d say. Three’s a charm.

To celebrate his own favorite—“see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” (nichts sehen, nichts hören, nichts sagen in German)—my professor filled his office with images of the three wise monkeys associated with this phrase. It is what people say when they don’t want to involve themselves in a situation that is likely to bring them trouble. Although I’ve often heard that this proverb originated in Japan or China, I can’t help noticing how similar it is to the Zoroastrian principle of “think good thoughts, speak good words, do good deeds.”

My husband shares my love of proverbs, although he doesn’t always realize his favorite sayings hail from these pithy expressions, and he tends to translate them into English literally. Early in our marriage he’d accuse me of “being in another garden” when he had trouble getting my attention. Unfortunately for him, even today I’m often in another world, a fictional realm that can feel more real to me than my physical reality—especially when I’m deep in the first draft of a story.

Or when I’m out of sorts and complaining too much, he’ll say “the food is always tastier in the neighbor’s house.” Yes, I know—the grass is greener… To be honest, I never really understood the English equivalent of this proverb. Why should I care where the grass is the greenest? If I were a cow, horse, or even a goat, perhaps it would make sense. But show me the way to a good meal, and I’ll follow you anywhere.

Another one of my favorite Farsi proverbs has an equivalent in many languages: zeyereh be Kerman bordan (carrying cumin to Kerman). It means to engage in pointless activity, the equivalent of carrying coals to Newcastle. Just as Newcastle was once a major coal-exporting town, the Iranian city of Kerman is famous for its cumin. I like this proverb because it lends itself to endless variations: carrying roses to Kashan, tea to Lahijan, or carpets to, well, just about anywhere in Iran.

Do you have a favorite proverb? If you do, share it in our comments section—in any language you like!

April Showers Bring Barrels of Wine

By Patricia Winton

I first moved to Rome on a bleak November day almost ten years ago. That first winter, rain pelted the city almost daily. I spent four months in a basement apartment with my only view through a small window near the ceiling where I watched feet splashing rain against the panes.

One night, around two AM, I stepped out of bed and into a pool of water that blanketed the entire floor of the apartment. It turned out that leaves had covered the storm drain in the courtyard, forcing the falling rain to rise in a virtual lake that eventually found its way under doorways and into the building. I spent hours mopping up the water and pouring it down the toilet. The resulting dampness led mold to grow on walls, enflaming my allergies. I coughed and wiped my runny nose until I moved.

When I got to my new digs that April, the sun arrived. I sat outside in a small courtyard to drink my morning coffee, to read, to study Italian, to let the sun wrap me in warmth and dry out my sodden body.

And everywhere I went, I praised the sun. “Isn’t it wonderful to see the sun?” and “What a beautiful, sunny day!” and “At last, the rain has stopped.” Italian people would shake their heads and frown. “Ogni goccia in aprile è un barile,” that is, for every drop of rain in April there will be a barrel of wine at harvest. This was my first introduction to superstitions about the weather here, and superstitions about wine productions abound.

Last year’s grape harvest produced the lowest number of barrels in about sixty years, so people have been paying careful attention to the weather this year. This April saw the highest rainfall in about thirty years, and if the first superstition holds, we should have a bumper crop this year.

Unfortunately, April was also the coldest in about thirty years; the rain and cold have continued into May. Neither situation bodes well for wine production because the extended cold and dampness lead to mildew and disease on the vines, retards blooms, and delays growth of the grapes.

But I’m going to be an optimist. Every drop of rain in April means a barrel of wine. I’m holding on to that.