The Significance Of Proverbs In West Africa

This book was an attempt at documenting and describing some linguistic practices of the ¿r¿ people using their proverbs as a vehicle. The primary aim was to restore the lost value of some ¿r¿ traditional values and practices through proverbs. To achieve this, modern technological equipment like a digital video camera, audio camera and still photo camera were employed in the recordings. Data were collected from daily interactions with some people in the ¿r¿ community and from other events like traditional marriage ceremonies, burial ceremonies, traditional plays, among others. A total of about three hundred (300) proverbs were extracted and used in building the corpus. These data were studied using the contextual theory for the classification and analysis. Since the data are not only meant for ¿r¿ speakers alone, they were translated into English and transcribed where necessary. From the data made available, it was discovered that the ¿r¿ language has sixteen phonemic consonants and seven phonemic vowels.