Analyzing Russian and English Proverbs: A Comparative Study

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THE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH
PROVERBS AND SAYINGS
There are two main aims in teaching foreign languages to students of linguistic departments of higher educational establishments: formation and development of phonetically, grammatically and lexically correct speech and adoption of the foreign language culture. Thus the process of learning a foreign language shouldn’t be only pragmatic, but also spiritual. An effective way of getting acquainted with the latter one is using phraseological units, idiomatic expressions, proverbs and sayings in the process of teaching, which reflect the social experience, traditions, customs, ways of behavior of people, for whom the language under study is native.
When speaking about the systems of …show more content…

For example, the proverb The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence is literally translated as «Трава всегда зеленее по ту сторону забора».
But there isn”t no such a proverb in the Russian language. Partially it corresponds semantically to the Russian saying «Хорошо там, где нас нет».
As well one has to remember that in every language there are phrases and expressions which can’t be perceived literally, even if one understands the semantic and grammatical meaning of every word. The idea of this proverb or saying seems obscure and strange. The attempts to translate these expressions word for word can lead to an unexpected and often very odd result. For example, the English phrase no room to swing a cat (literally «нет места, чтобы размахивать кошкой») corresponds to the Russian equivalent «яблоку негде упасть».
When choosing an equivalent to English idioms, phraseological units, proverbs and sayings we should try to find some grammatical or semantic correspondence in both expressions, for instance to correlate some familiar parts

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