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Elisabeth Piirainen
two or three languages per unit that are separated from other languages by clear boundaries, without
regard to the whole. This can be illustrated with a very recent example, cited here only as one
example of many similar studies.
In a conference volume that was recently published (Álvarez de la Granja 2008), there are 19
contributions from the field of cross-linguistic, mainly bilingual, phraseology. There are several
cases where one and the same idiom is discussed in different articles of the book, without reference
to one another. For example, an article on Latvian and French proverbs (Billere 2008, 256)
finds that both languages reveal the same attitude towards a man’s work: “Quand il s’agit de
l’attitude des gens envers le travail, les français aussi bien que les lettons associent le travail au
pain”, citing the French idiom manger son pain à la sueur de son front “to eat one’s bread by the
sweat of one’s forehead”. The biblical origin of the idiom (Genesis 3:19) or the linguistic situation
in languages other than Latvian and French, however, play no role.
The same idiom is the topic of a trilingual study in the above-mentioned volume (Ayupova
2008, 51), which observes that “[w]hen a Russian works very hard his face sweats ( –
with sweat in one’s face), whereas sweat will on the Englishman’s brow (the sweat of one’s brow)
and the Tatar’s forehead ( – with sweat on the forehead).” The author comes
to the conclusion that “[s]uch differences in the componential structure of interlingual phraseological
equivalents cannot be due to any other factor than people’s differing mentalities, linguistic
images of the world, or the associations speakers of these languages make.” (ibid.) Again,
instead of a consideration of the cultural and historical background – the fact that the lexical differences
between face, brow and forehead are due to different biblical traditions, i. e. to different
translations of one and the same verse from the Bible – unsound explanations are made based on
“people’s differing mentalities”.
Such examples show that phraseological research has to get away from accidental observations
on “similarities” or “differences” of idioms in a few languages and instead study the phenomena
across as many languages as possible. Above all, phraseology is a linguistic level that – due to its
interrelation with culture – can be better explored and understood in a pan-European context. An
inventory of idioms that shows equivalents across many languages, be it in the form of a reference
book or otherwise, is a matter of urgent necessity in order to provide researchers with information
that goes beyond only a few languages.
As only a large-scale investigation can reveal, more than 52 European languages have adopted
equivalents of the idiom by the sweat of one’s brow (or German im Schweiße seines Angesichts
“by the sweat of one’s face”, Spanish con el sudor de su frente “with the sweat of his forehead”,
etc.). Map 1 illustrates the diffusion of the idiom: Languages marked on gray rectangles possess
equivalents. Certain regularities can be discovered with respect to the different constituents: All
Romance languages, as well as Albanian, Greek and North Finnic languages have the variant with
forehead, all Germanic languages (except for English), the Baltic languages, Hungarian and Maltese
have the variant face, while the Slavonic languages vary between the two or use them side by
side (e. g. Macedonian vo potta na svoeto lice/elo “in the sweat of his face/forehead”). The
variant brow is restricted to English, Irish (as allas a mhalai/le hallas a mhalaí “by the sweat of
his brow”) and West Karaim, a very small declining Turkic language (manlajynyn terinia kadar
(išliamia) “(to work) till the sweat on one’s brow”). Other Turkic languages (Turkish, Tatar and
Azerbaijani) follow the pattern forehead. A variant “with sweat on one’s cheek” is known in Latvian
(ar sviedriem vaig). Map 1 is among the early results that emerged in the context of the
project “Widespread Idioms in Europe and Beyond”, which will be briefly outlined below.