The Armchair Linguist

The squeaky wheel - good or bad?

I recently ran across a Turkish saying, "Aglamayan çocuga meme verilmez." The literal translation of this is "The child who doesn't cry doesn't get the nipple." But the moral translation is "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." In other words, in both Turkish and English-speaking society, it is a good thing to stand out and make your needs known.

On the other hand, I have been told that in Japanese (not one of my languages, although I took two semesters of it once upon a time!), there is a saying, "The nail that sticks out gets hit on the head." This would be the opposite moral message, i.e. it is not a good thing to be different from others or get one's voice heard.

This shows the fundamental difference between Far Eastern society and that of the West. Turkey, which is often referred to as a crossroads or bridge between East and West, sometimes sits on the one side and sometimes on the other. But in terms of this particular aspect of society, the language seems to point to a more Western-leaning point of view.

posted by Laura Blumenthal @ 1:40 a.m.