Cultural Awareness through Animal Proverbs in English and Myanmar

Thet Ni

Every country has proverbs that are unique to it. Proverbs reflect the culture of people and its nation. Proverbs and sayings are effective devices of truth about culture, religion, tradition, custom and belief. The present study tries to find out the cultural differences in the concept of animals through English and Myanmar proverbs.Animals have been in harmony with human beings through centuries. People have used animal images in their daily livesto express their ideas and feelings explicitly. There are lots of animal proverbs in English and Myanmar but this study compares and analyzes some proverbs which are identical in meaning but are different in animal images and proverbs with identical in meaning and animal images.For this purpose 11 proverbs from English and Myanmar are collected and analyzed. It is identified that some proverbs share similar semantic function with different animal images. These proverbs reflect different cultural, social and cognitive values of two nations.

https://doi.org/10.31871/WJRR.9.2.13