Proverbs
Proverbs and idiomatic (ilu in Igbo) expressions are highly valued by the Igbo people and proficiency in the language means knowing how to intersperse speech with a good dose of proverbs. Chinua Achebe (in Things Fall Apart) describes proverbs as "the palm oil with which words are eaten". Proverbs are widely used in the traditional society to describe, in very few words, what could have otherwise required a thousand words. Proverbs may also become euphemistic means of making certain expressions in the Igbo society, thus the Igbo have come to typically rely on this as avenues of certain expressions.
Read more about this topic: Igbo Language
Famous quotes containing the word proverbs:
“The sated appetite spurns honey, but to a ravenous appetite even the bitter is sweet.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 27:7.
“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.”
—17th-century English proverb, collected in George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (1640)
“Who is so deaf or so blind as he
That wilfully will neither hear nor see?”
—16th century English proverb, collected in J. Heywood, Dialogue of Proverbs (1546)