Dictionary of American Proverbs

Martha, I bet you know African American proverbs, but don’t know that you know them.

Maybe.

Here’s why I say that.

We all know that black American English has had a great influence on slang, right? And introduces new words through popular culture, sports, and literature, and so forth.

Music, yeah.

Music.

But it also shows up in our proverbs, the things that we say, kind of the aphorisms, the stuff that we say to kind of confirm that universal truths are understood to be true.

Does that make sense?

Sure.

And so I was looking through the book Proverbs, a handbook by Wolfgang Mieder, M-I-E-D-E-R, and he has some lists in there of African-American proverbs. And I am pretty interested to see how many of these proverbs are now part of mainstream English. And he proposes that they came into mainstream English through black American culture.

Here’s one you probably know from the television show, Different Strokes for Different Folks.

Sure.

Yeah, that’s one.

Oh, no kidding.

And it makes sense, though, right?

Sure.

It’s a show about two black kids who were adopted into a white family, right?

Right, right.

What goes around comes around.

That’s from African-American?

He suggests that that’s the case.

It’s an interesting proposal, right?

Yeah.

Well, why shouldn’t the proverbs from black American English come into the mainstream English, just like any other useful part of language that came as people recognized it for its value?

Sure.

And borrowed it.

Sure.

I’m just curious how he knows that that’s the source.

What does any academic do?

He did his research.

You have to pay to play.

When they talk about pay-go and pay-as-you-go in Washington, perhaps that’s a callback, right?

Yeah, pay to play, yeah.

It takes one to know one.

Really?

He suggests that that’s true.

Cool.

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