Variants and Variations of Somali Proverbs

Paper read at the 9th Congress of the Somali Studies International Association, Aalborg, 2004, subtitled “Some results of the paremiological experiment in Berlin and Aarhus”.

Paremia is a Greek word which means “saying”, “parable”; paremiology refers to the philological branch of science dealing with proverbs, proverbial phrases and other proverbial clichés. Between 1999 and 2001 a Somali paremiological experiment was accomplished by me in Berlin and the Danish city of Aarhus. The experiment had two major goals:

  1. To find out how many, and which, proverbs are still widely used in Somali culture;
  2. To find out what the proverb knowledge of the Somalis depends upon.

The procedure of the experiment and its main results are described in my book Hubsiimo hal baa la siistaa/To know something for sure one would even part with a she-camel (Moscow, 2002). In brief, 45 Somalis, both male and female, of different ages, education and social background were asked to add the missing parts of the carefully chosen 656 proverbs set out in the questionnaires, such as:

Maroodigu takarta saaran ma arkee (An elephant does not see the gadfly which is sitting on it) …kan kale tan saaran ayuu arkaa (but sees the one sitting on another elephant);
Doqon wixii casarkii lagu caayo (How you curse a fool in the afternoon) …ayay cishihii kugu caaysaa (so will he curse you in the evening);
Dawaco tallaabadeediina ka tagtay (The jackal has changed its step) …tii Nebigana gaari weyday (but still does not walk like the Prophet [i.e. one cannot change oneself])

and so on.

The data from the 45 questionnaires, that is all the correct completions as regards meaning of the 656 truncated proverbs, were thoroughly evaluated and registered and are now displayed in the final part of the book. A representative entry is the proverb Soomaalidu been waa sheegtaa, beense ma maahmaahdo (Somalis can lie, but they do not lie in proverbs):

574. Soomaalidu been waa / sheegtaa, beense ma maahmaahdo. 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45
…sheegtaa, laakiinse kuma maahmaahdo. 4, 39
…sheegtaa, been kuma maahmaahdo. 5
…sheegtaa ee been ma maahmaahdo. 6, 7, 16, 17, 34, 35, 43
…sheegtaa, beense kuma maahmaahdo. 10, 14, 23, 31
…sheegtaa ee been kuma maahmaahdo. 15
…sheegtaa, laakiin been ma maahmaahdo. 18, 24, 45
…sheegtaa, se ma maahmaahdo. 19
…ku hadashaa, laakiin been ma maahmaahdo. 21, 38
…sheegtaa, laakiin been ma ku maahmaahdo. 22
…hadashaa, beense ma maahmaahdo. 26
…sheegtaa, laakiin been kuma maahmaahdo. 28
…sheegtaa, laakiin ma maahmaahdo. 29
…sheegtaa ee kuma maahmaahdo. 30

The number before the proverb is its ordinal number (according to the Somali alphabet) in the questionnaire. The oblique stroke after the sentence particle waa shows that it concluded the first part of the proverb, which had figured in the questionnaires. The sequence of numbers which follow the proverb identify the questionnaires in which the truncated proverb was correctly completed, making a total of 36 respondents who demonstrated an active knowledge of it. Set out below are versions of the second part of the proverb added by the participants, the numbers after each variant showing the number of informants who knew the proverb in this form. The most frequent form can be regarded as the contemporary standard variant of this proverb, which here is the expected form from the experimental corpus, confirmed by 10 respondents. Incidentally, one of the aims of the experiment was also to reveal the standard forms of the Somali proverbial stock.

Hubsiimo hal baa la siistaa presents the Somali paremiological minimum, i.e. 249 proverbs known to the majority of the respondents (and I am sure to the majority of Somalis) in the most frequently used forms.

The abundance of forms

As has been demonstrated above, the proverb Soomaalidu been waa sheegtaa, beense ma maahmaahdo is characterised by a very broad spectrum of variance. Out of the 39 informants who proved to have known this proverb, 26 gave answers differing from its standard form. Moreover almost all the 656 proverbs, which had been chosen for the experiment, were completed by the respondents in different ways. This applies to the shortest as well as to the longest proverbs, and seems not to depend upon the use of alliteration or other artistic means.

For example, 28 out of the 30 informants who knew the proverb Dhar magaalo intii laga xirto waa dhowdahay, dhal magaalse intii laga noqdo waa dheer tahay (One can quickly put on town clothes, but it takes a long time to become a townsman) introduced their own versions. It could well be an urban proverb, presumably a young one, and therefore may not be “settled” yet. But nearby there is a proverb which for sure reflects the experience of nomads — Dhar aanad lahayni dhaxan kaama celiyo (Somebody else’s clothes do not warm you [lit.: do not protect you from cold]) — and which also has a lot of different forms: …kuma dhaxan tiro (…do not wipe out cold in you), …dhaxan kaama dado (…do not screen you from cold), …feero kuuma daboolo (…do not cover your ribs), and even …futo kuuma qariyo (…do not hide your bottom)!

It is important to distinguish between deviations from a standard proverbial form which do not semantically affect a proverb’s general meaning, and those which modify the general meaning. The deviations of the first type can be regarded as variations and deviations of the second type as variants.

There are three major groups of variations and variants: grammatical modifications (I), lexical changes (II), and reductions and extensions (III).

I. Grammatical modifications

Grammatical modifications, in their turn, can be subdivided into morphological and syntactical variations, and variations of modality.

1. Morphological variations

Morphological or rather phonetic variations (since the majority of Somalis write as they hear) can be observed almost everywhere. They expose dialectal differences between the informants:

299. Jinni ninkii keenaa bixiya (He who brought the jinnee [i.e. the trouble] must take it away).

75% of the respondents who knew this proverb used the verb of the main sentence (the predicate) in its prevailing form bixiya (the 3rd person masculine singular in Present Simple with the subject followed by the focus marker baa), while 17.5% used the dialectal form bixiyo, and the remaining 7.5% baxsha.

370. Meel lagaa jecel yahay haddaad ka tagto, meel lagaa neceb yahay ayaad tagtaa (If you leave the place in which you are loved, you will come to the place in which you are hated).

57.7% of the respondents conjugated the verb tag (go, leave) of the conditional subordinate clause in the 2nd person singular by adding the suffix -to (tagto), and 30.8% used the suffix -tid (tagtid). The rest (12.5%) knew this proverb in the form which does not have a subordinate clause.

It goes without saying that the dialectal opposition of the consonants r and dh is a source of a number of variations fixed in questionnaires. It can be well exemplified by the proverb:

76. Caano aan fiiqsi loo dhamin iyo hadal aan fiiro loo odhan feedhahaaga ayay wax yeelaan (Milk which is gulped and words which are said rashly will hurt your ribs [in the first case they will ache from coughing, in the second from a beating]),

which contains two words which are pronounced (and written) differently by the representatives of northern and southern dialects: odhan/oran (to say) and feedh/feer (a rib) in the plural. 6 out of the 22 respondents (i.e. 27.3%) who completed this proverb correctly used the morpheme dh in both cases. 9 respondents (40.9%) used the noun in the form of feer, while 2 substituted the verb oran by the verb dhihi, with the same meaning (to say). One respondent brought together dhah and feedh, and some escaped the usage of one or both words by means of substitution or reduction.

2. Syntactical variations

Syntactical variations are rare, in spite of a rather free order of words in Somali independent sentences, and this can be explained by the fact that proverbs tend to be stable in their verbal forms. Therefore the main productive means of the diversification of proverb texts, which can be attributed to syntax, is interchangeability of the focus markers baa and ayaa/yaa. All of them can be seen in the variations of a proverb taken at random:

75. Caado la gooyey caro Allay (Alle + baa + ay) leedahay (A broken tradition angers God).

In the second (missing) part of the proverb 28.6% of respondents used ayay (i.e. the focus marker ayaa combined with the short subjective pronoun of the 3rd person feminine singular -ay), while 14.3% wrote baa and the pronoun separately from the object (cadho/caro Alle bay…) and one respondent used the focus marker in the form of yaa in combination with the short subjective pronoun (yay).

An interesting example of the proverb variance achieved by the transfer of the subject is the proverb:

46. Bannaankiisa-mare maradiisa geed ma qabsato (The clothing of the man who skirts about a clearing will not catch on a tree [i.e. a cautious person will avoid troubles]),

which is known by 31 respondents. But almost a quarter of them use as its subject not “the clothing” but “a tree”: Bannaankiisa-mare maradiisa geed ma qabsado (The clothing of the man who skirts about a clearing will not be caught by a tree), which is obvious from the form of the 3rd person masculine singular of the predicate of the main sentence.

3. Variations of modality

146. Dhurwaa kan ciya iyo kan aammusan, kan ciyaa roon (A barking hyena is better than one which keeps silent [it is less dangerous])

is known to 55.5% of respondents in the version of an affirmative sentence, and to the rest as a question. One of the variants goes: Dhurwaa kan ciya iyo kan aammusan, kee baa daran? (Which hyena is worse: a barking one or one which keeps silent?)

II. Lexical changes

Lexical changes, just as grammatical modifications, may not semantically affect a proverb’s overall meaning, as for example in the proverb:

471. Nin walba midduu caashaqaa/ waa u Cambaro-luul (To every man his beloved [lit.: the one he loves] seems to be Cambaro-luul [a beautiful woman’s name with the meaning “amber” and “pearl”]).

In a number of questionnaires Cambaro-luul has been substituted by other women’s names, all of them beginning with ayn to match the alliterated word caashaqaa (he loves): Caynabo, Canab, Cambalow, Calmadaa or Ceebla’.

Usually, however, lexical changes result in variants and even bring forth new proverbs. Thus in the proverb

418. Nin aanad saacad ku baran sannad kuma baratid (The man whom you failed to know within an hour you will not know within a year)

some respondents substituted sannad (a year) by maalin (a day), bil (a month), soddon (thirty [days]) and bilo (months). In the sequence of the added parts following the proverb

415. Nin aan waxa jooga garani waxa soo socda ma garto (He who does not understand what is going on now will not understand what is going to happen)

one can see there are three texts in which waxa soo socda (what is coming) is substituted by waxa maqan or wax maqan (what is absent). No doubt we have here another proverb, since it is based on the invariant pair of opposite entities “present-absent” and not “present-future” as in the initial proverb. In other words the themes of these two proverbs are different.

III. Reductions and extensions

1. Proverb reduction

Proverb reduction displays variations without direct implications for the proverb’s meaning. Chlosta and Grzybek in their survey of American proverbs have stressed their tendency towards reduction. The Somali paremiological experiment does not provide ample grounds for a similar conclusion, though there are, in fact, shorter versions of the standard variants among the respondents’ answers:

166. Doqonta usha agteeda ku dhufo, hadday garan weydana gogga u geli (Threaten a fool with a stick and if he misunderstands you beat him).

38.7% of those respondents who knew this proverb gave variants without a subordinate clause: Doqonta usha agteeda ku dhufo (Threaten a fool with a stick [lit.: strike with a stick a place near a fool]) or Doqonta usha agteeda ayaa (or baa) lagu dhuftaa (A fool should be threatened with a stick).

2. Proverb extension

Examples of extension, which usually form a proverb’s variants, are even fewer in our research. Here is a typical case:

90. Carruuri haddii aad kuftid way kugu qoslaan (When a grown-up falls, children laugh).

26.1% of the respondents who proved to have known this proverb extended it by adding haddii ay kufaanna way ooyaan (but when they themselves fall they cry).

Conclusion

In spite of the abundance of variants and variations reflecting peculiarities of the usage of Somali proverbs on individual, family and regional levels, there is no doubt of the existence of the common Somali proverbial stock, the core of which is the so-called paremiological minimum of the Somali language.

References

Read at the 9th Congress of the Somali Studies International Association, Aalborg, 2004; published in Proverbium (Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship), Vol. 25, Burlington, 2008.