Some articles occasionally refer to proverbs as idioms. Proverbs and idioms are both established language forms in Chinese, and they are closely related. The idiom "established by convention" contains the words "habit" and "success". However, from the perspective of learning, they still have their own characteristics. Compare the following examples:
Big fish eat small fish, small fish eat shrimp.
B, the jungle
A crooked tree, many years old, straight up.
B, it's hard to go back
The horn that grows behind the nail is longer than the ear that grows first.
Second, come from behind.
A, pick up sesame seeds and throw watermelon.
try to save a little only to lose a lot
First, you go your way; I crossed my wooden bridge.
B, go their separate ways
A, the former is afraid of wolves, while the latter is afraid of tigers
Second, cowardice
First, clean the bottom of the casserole.
B, get to the bottom of it
A, the tortoise looks at mung beans and looks at mung beans.
Second, love at first sight
In the above example, A and B have the same meaning, A is a proverb and B is an idiom. Common sayings take image as the main body; Idioms are characterized by conciseness. Idioms are mostly complete sentences with different lengths, which can be used flexibly; Idioms are mostly four-character stable structures with neat forms. The proverb is passed down from mouth to mouth among the people, and its words are still widely circulated today. Idioms are mostly used in written language and tend to be elegant in words. From this comparison, it can be defined from the main aspects: proverbs are popular spoken language with images as the main body, and their structural forms are relatively stable, but they can be flexible in practical application.
This is the main connotation of proverbs, and in terms of its extension, it inevitably overlaps with idioms. Although image is the main body of proverbs, it does not rule out refinement; Although idioms are characterized by conciseness, they do not exclude images. Although most idioms are four-character structures, some of them are composed of more than four characters; Although the sentence patterns of common sayings vary in length, a few of them are composed of four words. Although spoken language is mostly spoken, it has been widely used in literary works, even in philosophy and science and technology books. With the improvement of people's education, idioms are often used in spoken English. In this way, proverbs and idioms may penetrate each other and cross each other. For example:
(1) The city gate caught fire, which affected the fish in the pool (image, eight characters, idiom → proverb)
(2) Three days to fish and two days to dry the net (image, eight characters, idiom → proverb)
(3) Worse (image, four words, proverb → idiom)
④ Habit becomes nature (concise, five-character, proverb → idiom)
⑤ Dare not cross the line (image, conciseness, seven words, proverb-idiom)
Common sayings are colloquial and idioms are written. These idioms have some characteristics of common sayings and idioms. It seems that both idioms and idioms can be included in dictionaries. Fortunately, this situation is not too much.
Common sayings and idioms may sometimes transform and coexist with each other. For example:
(1) The bench is not hot-the seat is not warm.
(2) Beating mice is afraid of breaking jade bottles.
(3) urgent need
(4) Eggs hit rocks-→ Eggs hit rocks.
⑤ Dead chickens lay eggs with a sieve → Dead chickens lay eggs.
⑥ Kill the donkey after pulling ←→ Dismantle the donkey and kill it.
⑦ Make a big axe in front of Lu Ban → Make a big axe in front of Lu Ban.
⑧ Never drank ink ←→ No ink on the chest.
⑨ Don't eat for fear of choking ←→ Give up eating because of choking.
Attending what medicine to take for what disease → suit the remedy to the case.
(1) (1) Catch all the fish in the river.
If the spoken sentence structure tends to be neat, it may be transformed into idioms; If you add visual elements, idioms may become proverbs. When a proverb is transformed into an idiom, it can still maintain its image; Idioms are transformed into proverbs, and if they lack images, they should be supplemented, and they are often transformed into two-part allegorical sayings. Proverbs and idioms are both related and different. Proverbs have advantages of proverbs; Idioms have the advantages of idioms. Common sayings make descriptions vivid, and idioms make arguments strong, which is worth learning.
Second, proverbs and aphorisms
Some books refer to common sayings and proverbs as common sayings and put them together. It is understandable to make it up together, but the two are not the same. Proverbs are only a part of proverbs, which sum up knowledge and experience and have ideological significance. For example:
(1) liquor red face, gold black heart.
(2) If you don't listen to the old man, you will suffer.
No matter how small a national event is, it is also a big event, and no matter how big a personal event is, it is also a small matter.
(4) the train runs fast, all by the headband.
The rivers and mountains may change, but not one's essential nature
6. The weight of gold was broken.
All landowners mountain, by water.
⑧ If you stay in the green hills, you are not afraid of running out of firewood.
Pet-name ruby ink can be thickened.
Attending men become bad when they have money; Women are rich only when they are bad.
(1) (1) people together, Taishan move.
Biting dogs don't show their teeth
(1) (3) As long as you work hard, iron ruler grinds into a needle.
Proverbs also sum up knowledge and experience and are of ideological significance. But careful distinction is slightly different. The knowledge and experience summarized by aphorisms are mainly social, mostly logical thinking and philosophical statements, often from famous works; The knowledge and experience summarized by proverbs are not limited to social aspects, but also include natural science and production practice (such as agricultural proverbs). From the mouth of the people, it belongs to image thinking and is a literary language. In this distinction, proverbs should be classified as written language and proverbs should be classified as spoken language. But it is inevitable that there will be overlap.
First, full of losses, moderate benefits (written language)
B, modesty makes people progress, pride makes people lag behind (oral)
Where there is a will, there is a way (written language)
Nothing in the world is difficult for one who sets his mind to it.
A, worry about the world first, and enjoy the world later (written language)
Suffering comes first, happiness comes last (oral)
Strictly speaking, in the above three groups, A is an aphorism and B is a proverb. However, due to the improvement of people's education level, these proverbs with classical Chinese colors have also entered the spoken language. We can only distinguish as much as possible, but we have to admit that there are still some overlapping phenomena.
Some proverbs are proverbs, others are descriptive sentences. They don't summarize knowledge and experience, but just express a modality. For example:
(1) Deny this pot of wine.
I wonder which kang is hot.
(3) The cicada drags the residual sound over other branches.
4 pick your nose horizontally and pick your eyes vertically.
⑤ Grasping eyebrows and beards.
6 get up early and catch up with the evening gathering.
All landowners beg grandpa, tell grandma.
The moon in foreign countries is rounder than that in China.
Pet-name ruby shook his head without nodding.
Attending to see whether to eat.
look but not see
① ② Wear red on the left and green on the right.
This part of the sentence is descriptive, different from proverbs that sum up knowledge and experience, and there is no clear terminology. Now it's just a general statement. It is really necessary to distinguish it from proverbs and give it a clear name.
Some books call it "idioms", but the language phenomena involved are "slang", such as back-to-back, burning the midnight oil, nonsense, muddling along and so on. In the preface of Five Thousand Proverbs, the author uses "idioms" to address descriptive proverbs. The definition of idiom is not very clear. Some dictionaries regard it as a term higher than common sayings and idioms, and its pronunciation is similar to that of "common sayings". Some dialect areas, even homophones, have their own shortcomings as terms. On second thought, I think it's better to use slang.
Slang, this term is sometimes mixed with slang, which is also called slang. This slang is related to the word "Li" in the village, which means "Li people". Slang often refers to a dialect with dialect color. Since idioms are sometimes mixed with slang, it is better to borrow the word "slang" to refer to these descriptive idioms.
Fourth, two-part allegorical sayings and one-liners
Two-part allegorical sayings and one-liners are basically synonyms. Two-part allegorical sayings are linguistic terms, and wisecracks are verb terms.
Two-part allegorical saying is a half sentence in form (the first half is an image or an example, and the second half is an explanation and explanation). In fact, it is to make the text more vivid and concrete. Therefore, two-part allegorical sayings should be included in common sayings. However, the images in two-part allegorical sayings are often comic and playful. It uses various rhetorical devices to modify words, phrases, languages and sentences (including proverbs themselves) to make them lively. Therefore, it is somewhat different from proverbs and descriptive slang. For example:
(1) daffodils don't bloom, playing dumb (modifier)
(2) Cats cry, mice cry and crocodiles cry (modifier phrase)
(3) When the water rushes to the Longwang Temple, our own people deny our own people (modify the sentence)
(4) carpenters wear cangue, bring it on themselves (modify idioms)
⑤ Zhang Fei's eyes are wide open (modify the proverb itself)
Some idioms are often translated into two-part allegorical sayings in order to enhance their imagery.
(1) rolling pin blowing fire, know nothing.
(2) The gold marbles are not worth the candle.
③ Green satin embroidered peony is the icing on the cake.
(4) Walking in the mill has no head or tail.
There are too many cooks when crabs cross the river.
⑥ Fifteen buckets to draw water, seven up and eight down.
⑦ The dung beetle turned into a cicada.
8 Mix tofu with scallion, clear and white.
Pet-name ruby scary notice, nonsense.
Two-part allegorical sayings are mixed, some contents and images are not good, and some are even rubbish, which should not be abused. Some commonly used two-part allegorical sayings have good images and are closely combined, similar to proverbs and descriptive slang. For example:
When a weasel looks at a chicken, the more he looks, the thinner he becomes (image first, explanation later, experience talk → proverb)
(2) Draw water with a sieve (image comes first, explanation comes last, descriptive slang → slang)
(3) Sesame blossoms, rising steadily (image before, explanation after, descriptive slang → slang).
To sum up, proverbs, slang (descriptive proverbs) and two-part allegorical sayings constitute the whole of proverbs. Common sayings are spoken sentences, which are different from written idioms and aphorisms. They are two systems of spoken Chinese and written Chinese.
Proverbs are fixed sentences widely circulated among the people, and they are the crystallization of experiences and lessons summed up by the people in their long-term life practice. Proverbs are simple and popular, but they reflect profound truth.
a two-part allegorical saying
Two-part allegorical saying is a unique language full of wisdom and interest in China, and it is also a grammar that people like to use.
Two-part allegorical saying is a special language form created by people in their life practice. Generally, it consists of two parts, the first part is an image metaphor, like a riddle, and the second part is an explanation and explanation, like a riddle, which is very natural and appropriate.
For example:
It takes two hands to fight-
Foot-binding of a lazy woman.
In common language. Usually, as long as you say the first half sentence and rest the second half sentence, you can understand and guess its original meaning, so it is called a two-part allegorical saying.
The name "Xiehouyu" first appeared in the Tang Dynasty. Old Tang books. As mentioned in the Biography of Gui Zheng, there is a so-called poem "After thanking the government for five times" (a kind of "after thanking" poem). However, as a language form and expression, it appeared as early as the pre-Qin period. For example, the warring States policy. Chu Ce IV: "It's not too late to mend." It means it's not too late to mend the sheepfold after losing the sheep. This is the earliest two-part allegorical saying we saw today.
We have reason to believe that this is a popular saying among the people at that time, which is based on the life experience of ordinary people. Although this kind of ancient two-part allegorical saying is rare in written records, it is believed that there are many people. For example, Qian Daxin's "Heng Yan Lu" said: "It is also a proverb in the Song Dynasty to send goose feathers a thousand miles away." This kind of two-part allegorical saying has been used to this day.
Some linguists and linguistic monographs will mention other related names when studying the origin of two-part allegorical sayings. For example, in The Origin of Rhetoric, Chen Wangdao introduced two-part allegorical sayings in the section of Tibetan dialect; In the study of proverbs, Guo Shaoyu pointed out that two-part allegorical sayings originated from "echo" (a form similar to guessing); Other books list names such as argot, riddle, proverb, shrinking feet and one-liners. By comparison, most of them reveal some similarities and differences. There is no definite theory about the classification of two-part allegorical sayings. Besides, there are many two-part allegorical sayings, all of which have several properties, so it is difficult to divide them scientifically. For the convenience of reference, we classify all the entries with homophonic words into one category, and the rest are divided into three categories according to the nature of figurative parts.
First, homophonic. For example:
Empty coffin burial-
Onion mixed with tofu-
This kind of two-part allegorical saying is homophonic with homophones or near homophones, which leads to another meaning from the original meaning. This kind of two-part allegorical saying often takes many twists and turns to understand its meaning. So it is more interesting.
Second, metaphor. For example:
Moving wood in an alley-
Cold water dough-
This kind of two-part allegorical saying is a metaphor for real or imaginary things. If you understand the characteristics and circumstances of the comparison, you can naturally understand the second half of the mystery.
Third, metaphor. For example:
Ants after autumn-
Chess pieces on the chessboard-
This kind of two-part allegorical saying takes one or some objects as an example. Understand the essence of analogy, and you can understand its meaning.
Fourth, the story. such as
Chu overlord holds the tripod-
Cao Cao eats chicken ribs-
This kind of xiehouyu generally refers to common allusions, fables, myths and legends. As long as you know the stories of Xiang Yu and Cao Cao, you can get a general understanding of the above two situations.
In the case of cross-category, it is classified as a category with more obvious characteristics. such as
Paper pipa-
This two-part allegorical saying is both metaphor and homophonic, and now it is classified as homophonic.
Two-part allegorical sayings have distinctive national characteristics, rich flavor of life, interesting humor and are deeply loved by the masses.