UAE Cultural Learning: Traditional Proverbs
Proverbs are an important part of the UAE folk literature and culture, mirroring Emirati history and beliefs from social and religious perspectives.
Since antiquity, proverbs have held a special meaning in the daily life and customs of Arabic People; with their honesty, wisdom, conciseness and fairness, proverbs have been always used to transmit educational values, offering bits of advice and life teachings once learned by local’s forefathers.
Desert tribes had different proverbs from those of the coast or mountains. Through the spoken word, they were passed down from one generation to the next. In the modern UAE, they are still used to communicate ethics and morals that need to be fostered.
Arabs are well known for using traditional proverbs to more profoundly demonstrate a situation or to elaborate more on what they are saying. For Arabic speakers, it might be difficult to understand the meaning of traditional Emirati proverbs as most of them use very local terminology charged with cultural markers, overtones and influences.
Proverbs, in general, have to be within specific criteria. They have to be short; have to have (a) hide meaning (s); and have to resemble the situation in a different setting. For example, to describe greed, the best proverb would be “min tem’a teba’a” which literally means “the greedy will sink”.
These proverbs are derived from stories. The previous proverb originally described a fisherman who got more fish than he needed, which made his boat sink. There are many proverbs that have different meaning, and people still use them in describing some analogous situations.
The number of proverbs used in the UAE dialect is great, and, in order to understand them, we need to list them with their meaning.
To elaborate on one proverb, “law min kil ya w neyar, ma tam fel wadi sheyar”, which implies that “because people have different interests, there are many other opportunities for them to seek. “The literal translation of the proverb above is: “if everyone were carpenters, they wouldn’t be any trees left in the valley.”
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