Proverbs as a Means of Crossing Cultural Borders

Abstract

“The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence/hill” is an old English proverb which shows that people tend to appreciate more what others have, just by crossing (with their eyes) the border represented by the fence/hill. Though the afore-mentioned proverb is a strong piece of advice against comparing what we possess with what others have, the aim of my paper is exactly that: to compare proverbs belonging to the Romanian culture to those of the Korean one, not for the sake of highlighting the wisdom or beauty of the Romanian over the Korean proverbs or vice versa but rather for identifying similarities and differences in terms of structure, vocabulary, and, above all, meaning, being aware that proverbs are elements of language that best reflect a culture’s beliefs and values. To this aim, 50 Romanian proverbs selected from two memorable Romanian sources (Iordache Golescu’s Proverbe comentate ‘Commented Proverbs’ and Anton Pann’s Proverbele românilor ‘The Romanians’ Proverbs’) will be compared with their Korean counterparts.

Keywords

• proverb
• internal and external markers
• cultural characteristics