Venetian proverbs illustrated

According to the dictionary, a proverb is a short phrase, a saying often witty, considered to be true, derived from popular experience away, but spread through all social strata over time.
Conventional wisdom has produced adages, rules and advice on various topics of everyday life: love, marriage, family and relatives, sex, health and human vices, work and wealth, society and politics, religion, weather and seasons, animals, and so on.
In the past, proverbs have been an important cultural vehicle and sometimes an affirmation of the class also. There is a science (the Paremiology) that is dedicated to the study of proverbs. The same proverb appears often through different languages and dialects. For historical and social reasons, it seems that the Veneto area has been very generous in this regard.

Here is a collection of proverbs from various regions of the Italian Triveneto lands. They are sorted in alphabetical order, and come from disparate sources, including personal memories for my long stay in the province of Venice as a child and a boy.

In correspondence with each image, below the Italian version, the English one appears in different color.
The first english line is the literal translation of the proverb, sometimes followed by a text in round brackets representing the broad sense of that sentence
If you understand the Italian language (maybe you are of Italian origin), take care that sometimes the dialect is influenced by regional and provincial differences.

My personal effort has been to add an image for each proverb, but someone can do better, so this initiative is open to your help.

You can send to my email your contribution to improve the graphics collection. The images will be included with subsequent updates and will show the statement 'Contributed by xxxx yyyy'. Obviously the images should not be copyright of third parties.

Choose the page from a starting letters group

A B CA CO D EA ELM F-G I L M-N O-P Q-R S T-U-V-X
© Copyright Giorgio Altichieri - 3/2010. All rights reserved.

You are listening: La biondina in gondoeta.mid    Back to my home page