Given the question "Why do the Americans have fewer proverbs now?" and the answer "They find proverbs too simple to explain things now.", write a conversation that might have happened.


M: Mary, have you ever wondered why some cultures have more proverbs than others? For example, the Mayans, the Incas, and the North American Indian tribes seem to have fewer proverbs than cultures like, the Arabians, and the Chinese. I wonder why this is.

W: What would you say about our ... our own culture? Would you say we're a culture that's rich in proverbs or one that lacks proverbs?

M: I think we, we have a rich heritage of proverbs - the Benjamin Franklin maxims, proverbs, wise sayings have been handed down to us.

W: Well, I think the fact that we're no longer creating proverbs today maybe says something ... maybe perhaps explains to some extent why proverbs in certain cultures were not as extended or extensive as in other cultures.

M: Mm, hmm. That's true. I wonder why we are not creating as many proverbs as we did in 1700s and 1800s. I agree with you. I don't think there are nearly as many. I can't think of any. I'm sure there are some, but I wonder why this is so.

W: Yeah, well, I think we all know a great many proverbs. If we sit down, we can think of some that we can ... we can list. But we don't seem to use them to explain things. We find many times that they're used too much and too simple - too general. Today we're much more sophisticated, you might say, and analytical, and therefore we don't use proverbs to explain things the way, say, our grandfathers and parents did.

M: Life is too complicated now to just quote a simple proverb to take care of things.

W: Right, and maybe to some extent that's why the North American Indians and the Mayans among others don't have as many proverbs. At least there's no record of as many proverbs. Since their own culture ... their traditions were highly eroded and they were wiped out during this era of change.

M: Well, that's interesting.