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on. The demerit of this approach is that a single proverb appears several times throughout the book. But this is far outweighed, in my view, by the convenience of seeing each proverb in its appropriate semantic place, without the need for cross reference. The statistics are as follows: the book as a whole has some 7,500 listings, representing 2,015 different proverbs, grouped into 468 semantic fields, representing around 650 themes. For a list of the semantic fields and their order, see the Contents page. For a complete listing of all the themes recognized within these fields, see Index 1.

      Anthologies are never finished, only abandoned. In the case of proverbs, one has to recognize very early on that the field is one of extraordinary magnitude. The proverbs of the world are numbered not in thousands but in millions. What is a couple of thousand among so many? I believe that small-scale compilations have their place, for there are still many avenues in the investigation of proverbs which remain to be explored. For this book, I have attempted to integrate just two dimensions – the cross-cultural and the semantic. But they are dimensions which are not usually considered together, and I hope thereby to make a small contribution to the evolution of this fascinating field.

      This has also been an exercise in standing on shoulders. My research has taken me from the early classical collections, such as Ray’s Proverbs of 1767, into modern popular collections, of the ‘Thousand Chinese Proverbs’ type, and from there into the World Wide Web, where there are now some remarkable intercultural sites. I give some references in Further Reading. I warmly acknowledge the help I have had from earlier paremiographers, and hope that this latest anthology does them, and their field, no disservice.

       David Crystal

THEMATIC CLASSIFICATION

      1  Existence

      2  Family

      3  Sameness

      4  Difference

      5  Small amount

      6  Large amount

      7  Increase – Decrease

      8  One alone

      9  One of two

      10  One of several

      11  Accompaniment

      12  Two – Twice – Both

      13  Three – Third

      14  Four or more

      15  Next to nothing

      16  Multitude

      17  Better – Worse

      18  Uniting

      19  Separating

      20  Chain – Rope – String

      21  Whole – Part

      22  Full – Entire

      23  Empty – Lacking

      24  Sequence – Order

      25  Assemblages

      26  Contents

      27  Kinds

      28  Always happening

      29  Conformity

      30  Repetition

      31  Time

      32  Years – Seasons – Months – Weeks

      33  Days – Nights

      34  Mornings – Afternoons – Evenings

      35  Hours – Minutes – Seconds

      36  Long time

      37  Never

      38  Clocks – Watches

      39  Beginnings – Endings