The grandmothers wise At least in the eyes of a child just opened to the world. Someone could say: “The devil knows more about the old man than the devil”. And he would surely be right. Because there are many phrases that are correct. I remember some of the ones these wise grandmothers gave me. Maria, in her native Portuguese, repeated: “Guarda o que não presta e teras o que te faz falta” (keep what you don’t need and you will have what you need). And maybe that’s why I’m invaded by objects around the house. Isabel, in her genuine Catalan, often said: “In the small pot there is good jam”. With my slight height of one and a half meters, it has served to strengthen my self-esteem.
I also remember from her: “Cel rogent, rain or wind”, which as an urbanite has allowed me to boast a touch of false rurality. Or the funny and eloquent one: “He caught me pissing in my stomach” that I think much more than I say. Because there are sayings that have not aged well such as: “Speaking foreign” or “Speaking Christian”.
So I got my hands on the interesting book L’origen de 110 popular sayings collected and explained by Albert Vidal and I couldn’t help but look for the ones my grandmothers used to say so much. I haven’t found them all and that’s not surprising. Because there are made-up phrases to give and to sell. As children, it was difficult to hear adults talk without being teased. Fact that happens less and less. We are losing this richness from popular wisdom and language. We have been putting them aside, well wrapped in mothballs in the trunk of memories.
Transmission fails. Sometimes, because we no longer feel identified with the saying, but this is not always the case. We are simply removing them from our vocabulary. This is why the work of authors like Albert Vidal is so important that, with the subtitle Why do we say…? (1) promises more volumes with more sayings accompanied by their meaning and origin. In the meantime, I entertain myself with these first 110, learn some and refresh others, such as the one that is still widely used today “The crux of the matter”. Vidal explains that it could come from a deformation of the Latin word lic that was used at the beginning of printing to indicate to the reader to pay attention to a specific passage in the reading. It seems to me a delicious origin, like that of many other popular sayings, which are still sweet icing on the cake of languages. Let’s savor them.
