The lexeme buke (’bread’) observed through the prism of Albanian phraseology and culture (with reference to Serbian)

Abstract

The paper gives a somewhat limited overview of the importance of the lexeme buke (’bread’) in Albanian culture from the aspect of linguoculturology and phraseology. The contrastive study is carried out from Albanian to Serbian and is based on the recorded phraseologisms and paroemias from relevant general and phraseological monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. The mentioned lexeme is observed as primary, although in both languages native speakers use a number of other secondary lexemes to designate a variety of sorts and shapes of bread. Idiotypical phraseological units demonstrate that the lexeme buke takes a special place and plays an important role in developing and nurturing social and interpersonal relations. At the same time, a series of identical or rather similar homotypical phraseologisms are identified in Serbian, which speaks in favour of the existence of relatively concordant ways of thinking, evaluating, and understanding the significance and role of bread in human society.

Keywords

• buke
• bread
• albanian
• serbian
• translation equivalents
• ethnography
• culture