Where There’s a Will There’s an Inheritance Tax

Proverbs with a Twist

Despite being deemed as fridge magnet wisdom by some and truisms for all occasions by others, proverbs never cease to attract learners of English. Whether they are striving to give more authenticity to their language production or they are merely fascinated by the similarities between various cultures underlined by proverbs, most students receive them with open arms. Understanding sayings helps people gain insight into other cultures and offers them a unifying basis in their cross-world dealings with clients and colleagues. 

Download
Where There’s a Will There’s an Inheritance Tax - Proverbs with a Twist
Where There’s a Will There’s an Inhe[...]
PDF-Dokument [374.6 KB]

Coming in a compact, philosophy-to-go format, proverbs provide excellent learning material for multinational groups or for internationally-oriented teams. They facilitate the expression of playfulness required for setting up a learning climate meant to promote creativity and out-of-box thinking. It’s always useful to have a capsule of wisdom up your sleeve, to administer whenever necessary, since people tend to be less offended if you wrap up an unpalatable idea in a proverb. 

There is a striking similarity between proverbs and graffiti, as they both represent the wisdom of the people. Graffiti artists often use a well-known proverb as their starting point. Here is a collection of witticisms based on proverbs, which can be used to enliven speeches and presentations, to ease tension during hard negotiation talks, to jazz up press releases. 

  • A bird in the hand is worth two in the bushes, and a fee in the hand is worth two in the book.
  • A fool and his money stabilise the economy. 
  • A penny saved is an economic breakthrough. 
  • The squeaky wheel doesn’t always get the grease; sometimes it gets replaced. 
  • Beauty is only skin deep; ugly goes to the bone. 
  • Where there’s a will, there’s a greedy solicitor waiting. 
  • The early bird catches the worm. And the worm is punished for rising too early. 
  • A friend in need is to be avoided by all means. 
  • An Englishman’s home is his castle while his wife is out shopping.
  • All’s fair in love and war. And politics. And business. And in general. 

Over to you now! Create some ‘graffiti wisdom’ with the following proverbs:

  • He who laughs last laughs best;
  • Money is the root of all evil;
  • Two’s company, three’s a crowd.

 

Good luck! 

Ihre Formularnachricht wurde erfolgreich versendet.

Sie haben folgende Daten eingegeben:

Your Feedback

Bitte korrigieren Sie Ihre Eingaben in den folgenden Feldern:
Beim Versenden des Formulars ist ein Fehler aufgetreten. Bitte versuchen Sie es später noch einmal.

Hinweis: Felder, die mit * bezeichnet sind, sind Pflichtfelder.

 

Based on an article published in Humanising Language Teaching, March 2007 

 

This article may be used for your own personal, non-commercial use. In the event of such use, all copyright and other notices and clear attribution to the author must be maintained. The content may not be modified, distributed, retransmitted or used, in whole or in part, in derivative works. All other uses, including reprinting, republishing and any further distribution, require written permission from the author. 


Monica Hoogstad ©2011