Ligurian:
Proverbi zeneixi

«Sciusciâ e sciorbî no se peu», uña de mascime ciù conosciue da lengua zeneise, e tòsto un di seu emblemi, l’attrovemmo za inte Plauto; donca no se peu dî ch’a segge in graddo de connottâ o carattere di zeneixi ciù de tanto, manco se se voëse anâ à revangâ unna quarche pæntella çelto-ligure de l’autô latin, ch’o l’ea nasciuo inte quella che ancheu a l’é Romagna. E, tra tutti i proverbi che passan pe sccetti zeneixi, quelli che pan avei de reixe abasta tra niatri, tanto da esprimme in sciô serio a zeneixitæ, en pöchi in davei: podama quello ch’o dixe ciù ben chi semmo niatri o l’é «Sensa vin se navega, sensa mogogni no», insemme con quell’atro dito, seu fræ, «I zeneixi an pagou trei citti pe mogognâ», apreuvo a-a lezzendia segondo a quæ i mainæ liguri an açettou unna paga ciù bassa, basta avei a libertæ de mogognâ; tanto pe dî che a libertæ de paròlla e de pensceo gh’ean ciù cae che tutto o resto, fiña de palanche, che l’é tutto dî.

Forme crestallizzæ, stereòtipi, epitomi do coscì dito «bon senso» ò senso commun, i proverbi e i mòddi de dî no gh’an ciù inte lô nisciuña fòrsa creativa, ni dialettica; son inandi de poule intressæ fra liatre ch’an fòrsa de persuaxon solo perché se semmo avviæ à sentîli coscì, ò perché son in rimma e ne gusta prononçiâli inte quella forma, un pittin comme n’accapita co-a poexia. Peuan ëse tegnui de fæto pe unna forma de poexia, sciben à un stato sgreuzzo e ben apòsta che e primme cheuggeite de proverbi, à parte o libbro da Bibbia ch’o ne pòrta o nomme, ean d’epoca ellenistica, stæte tiæ da-i poemmi epichi de l’antighitæ. A vixon do mondo che esprimman a l’é de soventi lontaña da-a nòstra, voxe de un mondo ben ben despægio, fòscia ciù duo, ma meno fäso ascì; de vòtte anche lesto à cacciâte in euggio de veitæ desgraddie. Invençioin de chi sa chi, che intran à fâ parte da memöia collettiva, ch’a l’ascòrda i nommi de persoñe, ma a ne sarva e euvie, i proverbi e i mòddi de dî son a voxe de un passou ch’o no meue, sciben che di belli viægi vorriëscimo lasciâselo a-e spalle; e se, stando a-o Borges, tutte e vòtte che un òmmo o repete un verso de Shakespeare, quell’òmmo o l’é Shakespeare, alantoa quande mi repeto un proverbio mi son tutte quelle miggiæe de persoñe che, inti secoli, l’an repetuo e daggo torna vitta à chi l’é visciuo avanti de mi. De spesso razzisti, e tutto feua che incluxivi, i proverbi manifestan mäfiansa verso i foresti, e dònne, i meghi, i speçiæ e – da-e nòstre bande – verso i prævi e i representanti do Stato e de fòrse de l’òrdene; no s’ascordemmo i rappòrti à dî pöco diffiçili co-o Regno sabaudo dòppo l’annescion de l’antiga Repubrica. Degno de nòtta che uña de primme testemonianse do ihairo vorgà zeneyze de l’Etæ de Mezo o l’é franco un proverbio contra di foresti: inti Annali do Jacopo Döia (1280-1294) pe atro scriti in latin; l’autô o repòrta sto dito chì: «Chi se fia in Corso porta la testa in scoso», chi se fia de un còrso o gh’à za a testa in scöso – l’é comme se o foïse za decapitou – pe remarcâ a pöca ò nisciuña affidabilitæ di isoen da Còrsega. Voxe de un mondo ch’o no gh’é ciù, de unna mentalitæ ch’a no l’à ciù raxon d’ëse, i proverbi meitan d’ëse studdiæ franco pe quello che son, vivagna de reflescioin in sce quello che semmo stæti, ch’a l’é a reixe de quello che saiemo.

English translation:
Genoese Proverbs

“You cannot blow and suck at the same time,” one of the best-known maxims of the Genoese language, and almost one of its emblems, can already be found in Plautus; so it cannot really be said to characterize the nature of the Genoese all that much, not even if we wanted to dig up some Celto-Ligurian kinship for the Latin author, who was born in what is now Romagna. And among all the proverbs that pass for genuinely Genoese, those that can claim sufficient roots among us, and truly express Genoeseness, are very few indeed: perhaps the one that best says who we are is without wine one can sail, without grumbling one cannot, together with its brother saying, the Genoese paid twenty cents for the right to grumble, from the legend according to which Ligurian sailors accepted lower pay just to have the freedom to complain; as if to say that freedom of speech and thought were preferable to everything else for them, even money — which is saying something.

Crystallized forms, stereotypes, epitomes of so-called good sense or common sense, proverbs and sayings no longer possess any creative or dialectical force; they are clusters of words interwoven with one another that have persuasive force only because we have grown used to hearing them that way, or because they rhyme and we enjoy pronouncing them in that form, rather as happens to us with poetry. They can in fact be regarded as a form of poetry, albeit in a raw state; and indeed the first collections of proverbs, apart from the book of the Bible that bears that name, were from the Hellenistic period, drawn from the epic poems of antiquity. The worldview they express is often far removed from our own, the voice of a very different world, perhaps harsher, but also less hypocritical; at times even ready to throw unwelcome truths back in your face. Inventions by who knows whom, which enter into the collective memory — a memory that forgets people’s names but preserves their works — proverbs and sayings are the voice of a past that does not die, even though we would often like to leave it behind; and if, according to Borges, every time a man repeats a line of Shakespeare, that man is Shakespeare, then when I repeat a proverb I am all those thousands of people who, over the centuries, have repeated it, and I bring back to life those who lived before me. Often racist, and anything but inclusive, proverbs show distrust toward foreigners, women, doctors, pharmacists and — in our part of the world — toward priests and representatives of the State and of law enforcement; we should not forget the relations, to put it mildly, that were difficult with the Savoyard Kingdom after the annexation of the old Republic. It is worth noting that one of the earliest attestations of clear medieval Genoese vernacular is precisely a proverb against foreigners: in the Annals of Jacopo Doria (1280–1294), otherwise written in Latin, the author records this saying: whoever trusts a Corsican carries his head in his lap, as if he had already been beheaded, underscoring the little, or nonexistent, reliability of the Corsican islanders. The voice of a world that no longer exists, of a mentality that often no longer has any reason to exist, proverbs deserve to be studied precisely for what they are: a source of reflection on what we have been, which lies at the root of what we shall be.