Alliteration, the repetition of like or similar consonant sounds, takes place with the “t” and similar “m/n” sounds. Assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds, is found in ‘i” (phonetically, both the /i/ sound of “stitch” and “in” and the /ay/ sound of “time” and “nine”). Repetition of the same or like-sounding words or syllables is another characteristic of proverbs in general. As here, in English where “time” and “nine” are similar, Turkish also accomplishes this through both its syntax and vocabulary.

Proverbs are most often characterized by their general use of figurative language, especially metaphor, and also their occasional play on words. While the original figurative meaning of “stitch” in our example above is not clear, its metaphorical nature is certain. (This is true of many other figura­tive expressions In English, e.g. “not by a long chalk.”)

Balanced clauses or phrases are still another universal characteristic of proverbs, and while there is only one clause found in our example, balance is found in the meter. Another English proverb, “A bird In the hand is worth two in the bush,” shows balance In two ways; “... in the hand/ ... in the bush,” where the two prepositional phrases both begin with “in”; moreover, the entire sentence may be balanced according to meter by “losing” the “is” as a half-syllable thus: “A bird in the hand’s worth two in the bush,” with stress falling twice in each part (bird/hand’s and two/bush). In fact, bal­ance in meaning as well as form is a literary characteristic going back to the Old Testament and reflected in the 1611 King James edition of the English Bible: “... gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.” (Isaiah)

Another aspect of balance is repetition, another fairly universal charac­teristic of proverbs. This Is seen In “in the hand/in the bush.” Other exam­ples from English: “Death’s day is doom’s day,” “Old fish, old oil, and an old friend are the best,” and “Pretty is as pretty does.”

Finally, balance is also achieved through repetition of semantic oppo­sites; “You can’t put old wine into new bottles” which dates back to Biblical times.

In summary, Turkish proverbs, English-language proverbs and world proverbs in general are characterized by their shortness, uniform meter/ stress, rhyme (often through alliteration and assonance), balance of claus­es/phrases (sometimes repetition of meaning as well as form, including op­posites), and use of figurative language (most often metaphor). Let’s exam­ine a number of Turkish proverbs according to these characteristics:

Shortness — We need cite no other examples than those above, almost all of which are six words or less in length. That excellent Turkish proverbs often consist of only four words is partly due to the Turkish language con­taining no definite article “the” and no prepositions (words add suffixes to show prepositional qualities instead); equivalent words for such common “excess baggage” in English as “is” and “he who” do not always appear in Turkish proverbs either.

Meter/stress — Word stress in Turkish depends on the number of sylla­bles in a word; both nouns and verbs add suffixes in Turkish and this may change stress within words, but stress changes are uniform. In fact, this important quality of Turkish often plays a major part in achieving a balance of clauses and phrases.

Ek tohumun hasını, çekme yiyecek yasını. “Sow good seed and don’t worry about what you will eat.” The first and second clauses both begin with an imperative (although the first is positive and the second negative, stress is not affected); both end with single-syllable nouns that have add­ed the possessive/linking suffix and the direct object suffix. (Note: Only the most strongly stressed syllables are marked in our examples.)

İnanma dostuna, saman doldurur postuna. “Don’t trust your friend or he will skin you alive and stuff your hide with straw.’ Here, the only syn­tactic balance is found in “dostuna/postuna” (which also exhibits alliter­ation, assonance and rhyme); therefore, the meter is a very important element in conveying the “Turkishness” of this proverb.

Biri yarar, ikisi karar, Üçü zarar. “One is of benefit, two are the limit, three are of detriment.” All three clauses begin with numerals with stress on the first syllable; the first ends in a verb with the third-person aorist (simple present) suffix, the second and third clauses end In simple noun forms.

Rhyme — Rhyme, including internal rhyme (rhyming words within lines rather than at the end of succeeding lines or clauses), is an important char­acteristic of Turkish proverbs; usually it takes place because of matching syntactic elements; in the above “dostuna/postuna” example, both are noun forms to which have been added the second-person singular suffix, plus dative suffix. The nominal roots are “dost” and “post”; because of Turk­ish rules of vowel harmony the two suffix forms are the same. The example immediately above is an exception; “yarar” is a verb form; “karar” and “zarar” are simple nominals. Often such exceptions contain words of foreign ori­gin (both of the two nouns above are from Arabic; “Ucuzdur vardir illeti... hikrneti” [above] is another example of Arabic loan words). Other examples of rhyme (including internal rhyme):

Varsa pulun olurum kulun; yoksa pulun kapidir yolun. “If you have money. I’m your slave; if not, there’s the door.” (Rhyming here is of both types.)

Allah yardım ederse kuluna, her iş girer yoluna. “If God helps his faithful servants, everything goes well.” (Cf. “God helps those who help themselves.”) (Again, of both types.) This and the above example show in­verted structures for the purpose of maintaining meter and rhyme; there are many other similar oecurences in Turkish proverbs seen throughout our examples.

Yel gibi gelen, sel gibi gider. “That which comes like the wind goes like the wind.” (Internal only.)

Sakal ile kamil olsa kişi, keçiye danışırlardı her işi. “If beards were a sign of wisdom, (Lit. perfection). then people would take counsel for every­thing with goats.”

Keçi şarap içmiş, dağa kurt aramaya gitmiş. ‘When a goat drinks wine, he goes to the mountains loaded for bear (lit, to look for a wolf).” (A drunk feels his oats.) (Rhyming at the end of the two clauses.)

Balık kokarsa tuzlanır, ya tuz kokarsa ne yapılır? “When a fish be­gins to smell you can salt it, but what can you do with salt that’s begun to spoil?” (What can you do when you’ve tried everything and even the fi­nal solution has failed?) (Rhyming at the end of the two clauses as well as repetition.)

Alliteration — Turkish proverbs contain numerous examples of allitera­tion; there are probably dozens of proverbs containing “bin... bir” (lit. “one thousand ... one”) as a special proverbial form. Where “bin” carries the meaning of “countless”; we may note that this Idea in non-proverbial Turk­ish expressions often is expressed through use of “kırk” (Lit. “forty”), as in the idiomatic “kırk bir kere maşallah” (“a thousand and one hurrahs!” [lit. “forty-one times”]). The use of “bin... bir” also serves to assist in keeping proverbs short and to provide uniform meter and balance (see the example at the beginning of the section on syntax, “bin olç bir kes”).

Bin dost az, bir düşman cok. “One thousand friends are too few, one enemy is too many.

Bin nasihatten bir musibet yeğdir. “One disaster teaches more than a thousand warnings.”

Yaş yetmiş, iş bitmiş. “He who has reached seventy is finished.” (i.e. He’s old and past his prime.)

Gönül kimi severse güzel odur. “The one who you love is the one who is beautiful.” (Beauty is a matter of individual taste.)

Sakla samanı, gelir zamanı. “Save hay for a rainy day.” (lit. “... its time will come.)

Dağ başına kış gelir, insanın başına iş gelir. “As surely as snow falls on the mountains, troubles befall people” where kış/iş provides the allit­eration; note repetition, another characteristic of proverbs, in “başına” and “gelir.”

Assonance — Turkish proverbs also contain many examples of asso­nance; it is strongly enabled by the rules of vowel harmony in Turkish which dictate that only the front vowels (I, e, u) follow front vowels, and only the back vowels (i, a, u) (rounded vowels “o” and “o” do not appear in non-primary syllable positions) follow back in native roots and in suffixes; this is followed by conditions governing high and low vowels. In addition to those containing “bin... bir” from the examples already cited above, “Nerede birlik, orada dirlik,” “Az veren candan, çok veren maldan,” “Ucuzdur vardır illeti, pahalıdır vardır hikmeti,” “Avradın malı eşeğin nalı,” “Altın ateşte insan mihnette belli olur,” “Ek tohumun hasını, cekme yiyecek yasını.” “İnanma dostuna saman doldurur postuna,” “Varsa pulun olurum kulun...,” “Yel gibi gelen, sel gibi gider.” “Yaş yetmiş. iş bitmiş,” and “Keçi şarap içmiş dağa kurt aramağa gitmiş.” Other examples of assonance:

Sabaha kalan davadan korkma. “Don’t fear the court battle put off until the morrow.”

Akara kokara bakma, çuvala girene bak! “Don’t worry about what’s oozing and smelling, keep your eye on what’s going into the sack.” (“Full speed ahead, stick to the most important business; to hell with the rest!”)

Avratla atı emanet etme. “Do not entrust your wife or horse to anyone.” Balance — In Turkish proverbs, balance is achieved syntactically, and

also by means of uniform meter/stress (examples above), and balance of clauses/phrases (sometimes repetition of meaning as well as form, includ­ing opposites). Here are some other examples:

Erken evlenen döl alır, erken kalkan yol alır. “He who marries early gets a large progency; he who rises early gets the open road.” This prov­erb shows balance in every respect: In syntax, the “-en/-an” Turkish present participle yielding “he who” is repeated; the object “döl” has its counterpart in the “yol” of the second clause and both clauses end in the “-ır” of the aorist tense. In sound and meter the parallels are obvious.

Otu çek, köküne bak. “Pull up the plant, look at its roots.” (“If you want to learn something about a person, learn about his family.”) Syntactic; the same verb form (imperative) is repeated.

Güzel nerde kavga orda. ‘Where there is beauty, there is strife.” Syntac­tic; the nominal locative case is repeated.

Altından çarık giysen gene adı çarıktır. “Even if you wear golden san­dals, they still are called sandals.” Repetition of word.

Iyi eden iyi bulur, kötü eden kötü bulur. “He who does good finds good, he who does evil finds evil.” Repetition of words; opposites.

Kulun dediği olmaz, Allah’ın dediği olur. “Not what the humble ser­vant says, but what God says happens.” Syntactic repetition; repeti­tion of words; opposite concepts.

Turkish proverbs, even though often containing many loan words (pri­marily from Arabic and Persian), are nevertheless characterized by their rel­atively “pure Turkish” vocabulary. Indeed, there are Turkish lexical ele­ments found in proverbs today which go back to Ancient and Middle Turkic that are otherwise not common in modem spoken Turkish. These may ap­pear in the same proverb containing foreign elements. Thus, in “Er ölür av­rat boş olur” (“When the husband (lit. male) dies, the wife is (considered) di­vorced”) the only foreign word “avrat” (Arabic) is found in an environment of words that are otherwise pure Turkish. However, today the word “avrat” may sometimes carry a less than complimentary connotation, and the word ‘er” is generally used to designate “male” (as a generic term) or to mean “common soldier, enlisted man.” Mahmut al-Kashghari’s proverb “Otug odhguç birle üçürmez” has its exact syntactic and conceptual counterpart in today’s “Ateş alevle söndürülmez” (“Fire can’t be put out with flames”), however there are no easily recognizable lexical elements remaining from the former in modem Turkish, which employs two foreign words. In “Bir yarar, ikisi karar, üçü zarar” (cited above), the proverb does not possess syntactic balance, but the Turkish aorist verb form “yarar” is balanced through meter and sound by two noun forms which are Arabic loan words.

In some cases, play on words is made possible through the use of Turk­ish together with foreign elements; “Atın suratını değil, süratini överler” (“They praise a horse for his endurance, not for his countenance”) employs two fairly common loan words from Arabic that have very similar sounds.

Also related to vocabulary as much as to syntax and style: Occasionally the same proverb may occur with some variations in meaning on account of regional perspective; for example the Turk from the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus may say, “Sora sora İstanbul bulunur”. Lit. “Istanbul is found by asking and asking along the way.” (i.e. “You can find anyplace you want to go simply by asking for directions”), while the Turk from İstanbul will more likely quote the traditional proverbial form referring to Baghdad or the Kaaba (at Mecca). And of course, in a great many cases regional differ­ences may account for variations in the vocabulary and form of a proverb with no real difference in perspective or meaning; in other cases meanings may also be altered. As just one example, this work cites “Kötülük eken piş­manlık biçer” (“He who sows evil reaps repentance”), while this writer has heard “Fenalık eken kötülük biçer” (“He who sows badness reaps evil”).

One more aspect typical of Turkish proverbs is that we may encounter proverbs, which are distinctly different in meaning (perhaps even exactly opposite), although they possess common elements of vocabulary, syntax, and style. For example, the proverb “Yağ acı olunca pilavı acı olur” (“If you use bitter butter, the steamed rice dish that you make with It will be bitter, too”) Is matched In vocabulary and is close in style to “Yağı acı olanın pilavından bellidir,” but in this reverb the translation is “The one who uses bitter but­ter Is known for his bitter steamed rice dish.” In the former, there Is under­lying advice “Don’t make a poor start or you will end up with a poor result,” while in the latter there is an observation that “One is judged by what he does/how he appears.

* * * * *  

Finally, It would be appropriate to discuss briefly the criteria by which a proverb may be defined~ as being of Turkish origin. In comparative language studies there has been much concern by scholars about language relation­ships; books with almost the weight and volume (and sometimes volumes) of an encyclopedia have been written, for example, defending or refuting the theory that Uralic and Altaic (including Turkic) languages are related. Solving the ultimate origin of such words as “apple,” which has cognates not only In Uralic and Altaic but throughout the Indo-European languages as well, through the solemn appellation “Wanderwort,” encourages us to deal with proverbs in like manner, admitting that it may be difficult to trace “Turkishness” exactly or with total certainty.

For the purpose of this book and its Introduction, however, we can find ourselves quite comfortable in defining a proverb as Turkish if it possesses at least some of the characteristics of Turkish proverbs as outlined above. At the same time we may also speculate on the Wanderwort aspects of a proverb like “Sakal keçide de var.” (“After all, goats have beards, too”) [“A beard is hardly a sign of wisdom.”]; which does not carry strong Turkish characteristics of syntax or style, while there is definite opportunity to de­fine It as being of ultimate Germanic language origin because of the similar­ity between Germanic “(Ziegen)bock” and “(Ziegen)bart.” Finally, it would be difficult to argue either way about a proverb such as “Her koyun kendi bacağından asılır.” (“Let every sheep hang by its own shank”), which is found at least as early In Turkish as Teshil (cited above), but in the words above is also documented in English with excellent meter and alliteration.