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Spoken Arabic Proverbs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Mahmoud Aziz F. Yassin
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Extract

Arabs have always had a particular taste for brief, concise and witty idioms and proverbs. Whereas an idiom is a ‘transition point’, a necessary introduction to the forthcoming discussion, a proverb is, instead, the climax of that event, the most important domain for the display and evaluation of verbal art. The view is occasionally expressed that proverbs are in fact a dead trait in the modern world. This view is due, at least in part, to the mistaken assumption that only illiterates use proverbs. It is doubtful whether increased literacy and education have seriously affected the quality and quantity of proverbial speech, at least in Arabic culture. Arabs' gatherings, formal and informal, are marked by highly formalized relationships. A formalized relationship gives rise to highly predictable and normalized language such as idioms and proverbs.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , February 1988 , pp. 59 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1988

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References

1 cf., e.g., Yassin, M. A. F., ‘Kuwaiti Arabic idioms’, BSOAS, XLI, 1, 1978, 67–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 al-Aboudi, M. A., al-Amthāl al-'āmmiyya fī najd, Riyad, 1959.Google Scholar

3 al-Juhayman, Abdulkarim, al-Amthalāl-sha'biyya fī qalb jazīrat al-'rab (3 vols.), Riyad, 1963.Google Scholar

4 al-Zayd, K. S., min al-Amthāl al-'ammiyya, Kuwait, 1961.Google Scholar

5 al-Nouri, A., al-Amthal al-dārija fī al-kuwayt, Beirut, 1968.Google Scholar

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7 al-Shaykh Hassan, M. A., al-'Adāt wa al-taqālīd fī dawlat al-'imārāt al-'aribiyya al-muttaḥida, Abu Dhabi, 1979.Google Scholar

8 Taymour, Ahmad, al-Amthāl al-'ammiyya, Cairo, 1949.Google Scholar

9 A notable exception is Burckhardt, J. L., Arabic proverbs: the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians, London (third ed.), 1972.Google Scholar However, there is a significant amount of material in German and French, e.g. Snouck, C. Hurgronje (Bijd. tot de Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 5, 1, 1986)Google Scholar; Fegali, M., Paris, 1938Google Scholar; Socin, A., Tübingen, 1878Google Scholar; Carlo de Landberg, Leyde, 1883Google Scholar; Omar al-Savi, Mecca, 1971.

10 This paper deals mainly with material taken from the dialects spoken in Kuwait (K), Dubai (D), Cairo (C) and ‘Unaiza (U) (A town in the Qaṣīm Province, Saudi Arabia) to present ‘surfacestructure’ stylistic/formal-cum-regional proverb variation. I have lived and worked in those areas for the last thirty years. For the Arabic dialects spoken in Kuwait and Dubai see Johnstone, T. M., Eastern Arabian dialect studies, London, 1967, translated into Arabic by al-Ḍhubayb, A. M., Riyad University, 1975Google Scholar. For the ‘Unaiza dialect see Johnstone, T. M., ‘Aspects of syllabication in the spoken Arabic of Anaiza’, BSOAS, xxx, 1, 1967, 1–16Google Scholar. Some Arabic proverbs, however, are ‘constants’, i.e., they are the same in form and function, and function as a lingua franca (F) of wide common communication among all Arabs.

11 Halliday, M. A. K., ‘Language structure and language function’, in Lyons, John (ed.), New horizons in linguistics, Hatmondsv/orth, 1970, 140–65.Google Scholar

12 For the reading conventions of Arabic forms see Yassin, M. A. F., ‘Bi-polar terms of address in Kuwaiti Arabic’, BSOAS, XL, 2, 1977, 297–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 For the poetics of proverbs, see Jakobson, Roman, ‘Linguistics and poetics’, in Seboek, Thomas (ed.), Style in language, Cambridge, Mass., 1960.Google Scholar

14 Proverbial patterns are mostly homiletic, i.e. reinforcing what is already known.

15 English proverbs have been culled from diverse sources, notably, The Oxford dictionary of English proverbs, 3rd ed.Oxford, 1970.Google Scholar

16 cf, e.g., Jakobson's, Roman use of ‘parallelism’ as a rhetorical figure, ‘Poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry’, Lingua, 21, 1968, 297–609.Google Scholar

17 1 am extending the use of this term to cover pairs of words, phrases and separate clauses. See, for instance, Bauman, Richard, Verbal art as performance, Rowley, Mass., 1977Google Scholar, for references to several works on ‘parallelism’ in different contexts and across different cultures.

18 ‘Russian proverbs’, The Quarterly Review, cxxxix, 1975, 496Google Scholar

19 Jakobson, Roman, ‘The phonemic and grammatical aspects of language in their interrelations’, Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Lingustics, Paris, 1949, 14.Google Scholar