Humanities Delivery Essay Series: Neighbor Proverbs
Photo by Reed Schick for the Harrison Center
The word neighbor, in English, has Germanic roots, like much of the English language. It is a combination of words that meant “near” and “dweller.” Humans tend to live around other humans, so it’s no surprise that many enduring idioms and proverbs involve the concepts of neighbors and ‘neighborliness.’ Some neighborhoods are a collective of multiple generations of people who have spent decades and lifetimes sharing the place, while others seem to be random. We often have a lot in common with our neighbors, though, whether it is the desire to be close to the ocean or common ties to a heritage culture.
Proverbs and idioms make their way into language like most words do— in an unplanned process of repetition that can take place quickly or over the course of a few hundred years. Idioms carry embedded cultural knowledge, and proverbs, a step beyond, have embedded cultural rules and expectations. Typically short, mnemonic phrases, they are meant to be easy to repeat and to serve as guides for living well within the given culture and circumstance.
Proverbs carry common sense and wisdom, but for them to become part and parcel of a language, they have to resonate with enough people as a relatable experience with an inherent lesson that is widely recognized. There is a level of background knowledge needed that is taught alongside language and culture, in the typically unconscious process of acculturation in which a child learns, both the good and bad of what it takes to be a successful adult in that society. Because of this, proverbs and idioms are difficult to learn in another language without also examining the cultural and historic contexts around them.
Proverbs give voice to the norms of proper behavior. Unlike laws that enforce codes of punishment if broken, proverbs are more like a nudge in the direction your social group wants you to go. Proverbs have both a literal and a metaphoric meaning. The phrase “a stitch in time saves nine,” for example, refers to taking care in sewing and knitting. Its understood meaning is about the prudence of being careful and methodical the first time, so as not to have to undo work later. Phrases that involve neighbor relationships reveal the values of that culture, like how much you should trust your neighbor and how much you should protect yourself from them. While these proverbs exist across different cultures, many have similar themes, including thinking your neighbor has a better chicken than you, the curse of a bad neighbor, reciprocal effects, and how fences, hedges, and window blinds would be a good idea.
There’s something about the neighbor’s chicken. In Romania, “My chicken is good, but my neighbor’s is better.” In Turkish culture, it looks like a goose; in Bulgaria, a duck. In Iran, it’s the soup. In Poland, it’s the corn. In Croatia, it’s the cow’s udders. In Korea, “The nicest woman is your own; the nicest harvest is your neighbor’s.”
The constant, nearly unavoidable comparison to your neighbor’s house, patio furniture, harvest, and chicken can lead to a life of discontentment and bitterness. The idiom from U.S. culture, “keeping up with the Joneses,” refers to this trap of comparison that leads to spiraling consumerism. Every culture has things it values, and human nature being what it is, we need reminders in the form of easily digestible proverbs to be satisfied with the soup in our own bowl.
There are proverbs in Nigerian, Arab, and Yiddish culture that say a version of, “Choose your neighbors before you buy the house.” Others compare having a bad neighbor to a curse— one that will sour even the largest windows with a lake view and the widest portico. Just ask Kentucky junior senator Rand Paul.
A notable story of a neighbor dispute in recent years involved Paul and the man who shared his property line, Rene Boucher. After an altercation, the senator ended up with six broken ribs and a story vague enough for a variety of rumors to fit in. While news outlets reported that the assault was politically motivated, the neighbors of their suburban Bowling Green community described them both as complicated, at times outright selfish characters who disagreed on many things, politics and lawn care included.
Being someone’s neighbor means you share your lives, whether that end is intentional or desired. Mutual effects— and mutual destruction— come from individual actions. Poison ivy and property values tend not to exist in isolation, sticking to their side of the fence. A Russian proverb says that “If you throw nettles in your neighbor’s garden, you will find them growing in your own.” And in Botswana: “The locusts do not devour only your neighbor’s field.”
If reciprocal destruction is on one side of the extreme and fully communal living on the other, the middle might be German or English culture, that all have a version of the proverb “Love your neighbor, but don’t tear down your fence.” Similarly, U.S. culture says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Proverbs deal with preemptive boundaries because of how closely connected you and your neighbor’s lives are. The people who live close to you have an insight into your life, as one Hebrew proverb illustrates, “Judge a man not by the words of his mother, but from the comments of his neighbors.” Your habits and conversations are visible to those who share your street, hence the Mexican proverb, “Love is blind, but not the neighbors.”
The people who might not be in our lives except for a circumstance of geography can become integral in our lives and could end up defining them. Traditional wisdom would have us navigate these relationships by keeping our neighbors close, but not too close, and remembering the value of the chickens in our own yards.
Author: Macy Lethco
Consulting Supervisor: Kipp Normand