Sayings that uncover the silver linings
In English we say 鈥淎pril showers bring May flowers鈥� or 鈥淚f life gives you lemons, make lemonade.鈥� How are these ideas expressed in other languages?
Staff
Languages around the world have proverbs about how good can be discovered in, or result from, negative situations. In English we might say 鈥淓very cloud has a silver lining,鈥� 鈥淎pril showers bring May flowers,鈥� or 鈥淚f life gives you lemons, make lemonade.鈥� How are these ideas expressed in other languages? 聽
French has a rain proverb too 鈥� 鈥淎fter the rain, the good weather鈥� 鈥� as well as one that is quite clear about the potential value of difficulty: 鈥淯nhappiness is good for something.鈥� German goes with 鈥淚f the day wasn鈥檛 your friend, then it was your teacher.鈥� 聽
In Spanish it鈥檚 not the rains but the days of the week that remind people that things will improve: 鈥淓very Tuesday has its Sunday.鈥� I鈥檓 not sure what鈥檚 wrong with Tuesday 鈥� perhaps you are tired from Monday but still have a long week ahead?聽
Then there is the Chinese 鈥淪ai Weng lost his horse,鈥� which appears in Japanese as 鈥淟ife is like Sai鈥檚 horse.鈥� These refer to a classic Chinese story about how to evaluate positive versus negative events. Sai鈥檚 horse runs away, which appears to be a misfortune. But it returns, bringing along another beautiful horse. His son tries to ride it and falls off, breaking his leg, but when the army comes to draft him into a war, he cannot go because of his injury. According to Daniel Crump Buchanan, author of 鈥淛apanese Proverbs and Sayings,鈥� the moral is 鈥淎n evil sometimes turns out to be a blessing in disguise.鈥澛�
Mandarin teacher Qui Giu Su notes, however, that the saying has another interpretation: 鈥淲ith what at first appears to be good luck can come misfortune.鈥� It is best, in other words, not to get too excited about good or ill circumstances, but to ride them out, for they will change.聽
The Yoruba version of our proverbial lemons is bitter leaf, Vernonia amygdalina, which features in the saying, 鈥淭he same rain that fell on the bitter leaf also fell on the sugarcane.鈥� The same situation can produce both bad things and good 鈥� it depends on how a person reacts to it.聽
鈥淭urn your face to the sun and shadows fall behind you鈥� is a version of 鈥淟ook on the bright side鈥� that appears in Maori as well as several African languages. Mongolian advises that sometimes, one just has to endure tribulations as best one can: 鈥淭imes are not always the same; the grass is not always greener.鈥� Occasionally when you travel with your sheep in search of better grass, you just don鈥檛 find any. But, there鈥檚 hope here too 鈥� sometimes it is greener; better days will return. 聽
The proverb that works best in these physically distanced coronavirus times? In Mongolian, it鈥檚 鈥淢an鈥檚 happiness lies in vacant steppes.鈥�