Editing Proverb (section)

===Borrowing and spread===
Proverbs are often and easily translated and transferred from one language into another. "There is nothing so uncertain as the derivation of proverbs, the same proverb being often found in all nations, and it is impossible to assign its paternity."<ref>p. ii. Thomas Fielding. 1825. Select proverbs of all nations. New York: Covert.</ref>
[[File:Притча о слепых.jpeg|290px|thumb|''[[The Blind Leading the Blind]]'' by [[Pieter Bruegel the Elder]]]]
Proverbs are often borrowed across lines of language, religion, and even time. For example, a proverb of the approximate form "No flies enter a mouth that is shut" is currently found in Spain, France, Ethiopia, and many countries in between. It is embraced as a true local proverb in many places and should not be excluded in any collection of proverbs because it is shared by the neighbors. However, though it has gone through multiple languages and millennia, the proverb can be traced back to an ancient Babylonian proverb<ref>p. 146. Pritchard, James. 1958. ''The Ancient Near East'', vol. 2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.</ref> Another example of a widely spread proverb is "A drowning person clutches at [frogs] foam", found in Peshai of Afghanistan<ref>p. 67. Ju-Hong Yun and Pashai Language Committee. 2010. On a mountain there is still a road. Peshawar, Pakistan: InterLit Foundation.</ref> and Orma of Kenya,<ref>p. 24. Calvin C. Katabarwa and Angelique Chelo. 2012. Wisdom from Orma, Kenya proverbs and wise sayings. Nairobi: African Proverbs Working Group. http://www.afriprov.org/images/afriprov/books/wisdomofOrmaproverbs.pdf</ref> and presumably places in between.

Proverbs about one hand clapping are common across Asia,<ref>Kamil V. Zvelebil. 1987. The Sound of the One Hand. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 107, No. 1, pp. 125–126.</ref> from Dari in Afghanistan<ref>p. 16, Edward Zellem. 2012. Zarbul Masalha: 151 Aghan Dari proverbs.</ref> to Japan.<ref>p. 164. Philip B. Yampolsky, (trans.). 1977. The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings. New York, Columbia University Press.</ref> Some studies have been done devoted to the spread of proverbs in certain regions, such as India and her neighbors<ref>Ludwik Sternbach. 1981. Indian Wisdom and Its Spread beyond India. Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol. 101, No. 1, pp. 97–131.</ref> and Europe.<ref>Matti Kuusi; Marje Joalaid; Elsa Kokare; Arvo Krikmann; Kari Laukkanen; Pentti Leino; Vaina Mālk; Ingrid Sarv. Proverbia Septentrionalia. ''900 Balto-Finnic Proverb Types with Russian, Baltic, German and Scandinavian Parallels''. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia (1985)</ref> An extreme example of the borrowing and spread of proverbs was the work done to create a corpus of proverbs for [[Esperanto]], where all the proverbs were translated from other languages.<ref>Fiedler, Sabine. 1999. Phraseology in planned languages. ''Language problems and language planning'' 23.2: 175–187.</ref>

It is often not possible to trace the direction of borrowing a proverb between languages. This is complicated by the fact that the borrowing may have been through plural languages. In some cases, it is possible to make a strong case for discerning the direction of the borrowing based on an artistic form of the proverb in one language, but a prosaic form in another language. For example, in Ethiopia there is a proverb "Of mothers and water, there is none evil." It is found in [[Amharic]], [[Alaba-K'abeena language|Alaaba language]], and [[Oromo language|Oromo]], three languages of Ethiopia:
* Oromo: ''Hadhaa fi bishaan, hamaa hin qaban.''
* Amharic: ''Käənnatənna wəha, kəfu yälläm.''
* Alaaba: ''Wiihaa ʔamaataa hiilu yoosebaʔa''<ref>p. 92. Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2009. ''Máakuti t'awá shuultáa: Proverbs finish the problems: Sayings of the Alaaba (Ethiopia)''. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.</ref>
The Oromo version uses poetic features, such as the initial ''ha'' in both clauses with the final ''-aa'' in the same word, and both clauses ending with ''-an''. Also, both clauses are built with the vowel ''a'' in the first and last words, but the vowel ''i'' in the one syllable central word. In contrast, the Amharic and Alaaba versions of the proverb show little evidence of sound-based art.

However, not all languages have proverbs. Proverbs are (nearly) universal across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Some languages in the Pacific have them, such as Māori with whakataukī.<ref>Brougham, Aileen E., Alexander Wyclif Reed, and Tīmoti Sam Kāretu. ''The Reed book of Maori proverbs.'' Reed Books, 1999.</ref> Other Pacific languages do not, e.g. "there are no proverbs in [[Kilivila]]" of the [[Trobriand Islands]].<ref>p. 277. Senft, Gunter. 2010. ''The Trobriand Islanders' Ways of Speaking.'' (Volume 27 of Trends in Linguistics. Documentation.) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.</ref>  In the New World, there are almost no proverbs: "While proverbs abound in the thousands in most cultures of the world, it remains a riddle why the Native Americans have hardly any proverb tradition at all."<ref>p. 108. Mieder, Wolfgang. 2004. ''Proverbs: A handbook. Greenwood Publishing Group.''</ref> Although, "as Mieder has commented . . . the reason for the visible lack of proverbs was probably the inability of foreign
researchers to identify proverbial utterances among those peoples."<ref>p. 313. Hakamies, Pekka. 2016. "Proverbs – A Universal Genre?", in ''Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Folklore and Beyond'', ed. by Kaarina Koski and Frog with Ulla Savolainen, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.</ref> Hakamies has examined the matter of whether proverbs are found universally, a universal genre, concluding that they are not.<ref>Hakamies, Pekka. 2016. "Proverbs – A Universal Genre?", in ''Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Folklore and Beyond'', ed. by Kaarina Koski and Frog with Ulla Savolainen, pp. 299–316. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.</ref>