Page "Proverb" Paragraph 77

Grigorii Permjakov developed the concept of the core set of proverbs that full members of society know, what he called the " paremiological minimum " ( 1979 ).

For example, an adult American is expected to be familiar with " Birds of a feather flock together ", part of the American paremiological minimum.

However, an average adult American is not expected to know " Fair in the cradle, foul in the saddle ", an old English proverb that is not part of the current American paremiological minimum.

Two noted examples of attempts to establish a paremiological minimum in America are by Haas ( 2008 ) and Hirsch, Kett, and Trefil ( 1988 ).

Studies of the paremiological minimum have been done for a limited number of languages, including Hungarian, Czech, Somali, and Esperanto.