Proverbs and sayings are some of the most fascinating defining elements of national identity, as they store the centuries-old popular wisdom, but also the native humor of people. Among them, a special place is occupied by those that appeal to place names and landscape elements, as they have a symbolic power and the capacity to activate imaginations and emotions, imposing positive or negative connotations on the phraseological structures.
Owing to the language skills of the author and to her cultural background, we could tap into three different cultural heritage of proverbs and sayings, and could decrypt meanings and symbols of national and regional dimensions.
After conducting a content analysis on various collections of proverbs and sayings, we came to a series of conclusions. In all three languages we traced several international clichés, formally identifiable by the presence of toponyms of notoriety (e.g. “All roads lead to Rome”) Some idiomatic expressions include place names which refer to representations of other cultural spaces, in which certain particularities are exploited (e.g. German “Eulen nach Athen tragen” [“to bring owls to Athens”], meaning to do something needless, unnecessary). Structures that contain hydronyms (e.g. Danube) enjoy a good phraseological representation in all three languages. At other times, the presence of the toponym serves for characterization of a person, description or qualification of a situation (e.g. Romanian “avocat de Târgovi?te“ [“a lawyer from Târgovi?te”], meaning a bad lawyer).
Proverbs and sayings, that include place names and landscape elements, resort to the quality of these toponyms, the connotations they bear and developed in the course of history of certain regions and people. They point at curios events, identity defining geographical places, circumstances which determined narratives and immortalise them in a witty manner.
Mots clés : proverbs |content analysis |toponyms
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