Why Grammar Through Proverbs?

The main reason is very simple: I LOVE PROVERBS. 

• Food for the brain. Proverbs are often wise, or funny, or poetic, or thought-provoking in some unusual way. Sometimes they are easy to figure out, but sometimes they are very subtle, almost like a riddle, so that you really have to think hard in order to understand them. Most proverbs have a metaphorical element, so you have to stop and ask yourself just how the proverb can be applied to human life - even better, how the proverb can be applied to your own life!

• A global resource. Proverbs are found all over the world. There is no human culture which does not have a store of wisdom contained in proverbial form. Given that proverbs deal with the most basic aspects of human life, you can find strikingly similar proverbs from cultures on opposite sides of the globe. Exploring proverbs from around the world is a great adventure, and you can find lots of resources online to help you do that, as well as many great books, including proverb collections at GoogleBooks (here are the proverb collections in my GoogleBooks Library).

• Both familiar and strange. While proverbs strive to express general truths, they often use highly specific cultural references or distinctive turns of phrase. This can make it difficult to translate proverbs from one language to another. For example, some of the best proverbs are based on rhyme - and translating a rhymed proverb from one language to another is often an impossible task. If you are studying a foreign language, take some time to learn about the proverbs in that language, and see what you can discover! Proverbs are a wonderful tool for learning a foreign language - instead of just memorizing vocabulary lists (BORING), memorize lists of proverbs instead (FUN!).

Grammar Through Proverbs. By using proverbs in these pages about English grammar and writing mechanics, I hope to "kill two birds with one stone," as the saying goes. I think there is a real value in reading and thinking about proverbs, and at the same time I would like to give people some help in understanding the rules of English writing, which are often very difficult for native speakers to learn. We spend the majority of our time listening to English and speaking it, especially nowadays. With most of our entertainment coming through music and forms of video, we do not spend much time reading English, much less writing it. As a result, even when they reach college, many students are still hesitant about many aspects of written English. I have chosen the proverbs used at this site in order to focus on the rules of English writing that seem to cause the most trouble for the students in my classes.

Random Proverbs. Just for fun, here is a random proverb for you to enjoy! If you have questions about this proverb, or any of the other proverbs that you see at this website, please feel free to leave a comment at this page. You might also Google the proverb in order to see if you can learn more about it from the many different proverb resources that are available online.

Latin proverbs and fables. My own personal interest is proverbs in the Latin language, along with Latin fables. As you can guess, proverbs and fables are very closely related genres, and the moral of a fable is often expressed in proverbial form. If you are a student of Latin and want to learn more about Latin proverbs, please visit my other wikis: Latin Via Proverbs and Latin Via Fables. Here is a list of the books I have published about fables and proverbs - Aesop's Fables (in English), Aesop's Fables in Latin, Latin Via Proverbs, and Vulgate Verses.