Traditional Jamaican proverb · taught in Portland
No kos aligieta lang-mout til yu kraas riva don.
Don't curse the alligator's long mouth until you have finished crossing the river.
Don't insult anyone whose help you still need.
negative imperative with time clause
The command comes first and the til clause second. Cuss takes two objects here — the alligator and its long mouth — which English will not allow, and done at the end marks the crossing as finished rather than the past.
This one is taught in Portland.
Cassidy gives this proverb — 'Don't cuss alligator long-mout' till you cross river done' — as his example of to curse used with a double object, a pattern not found in standard English.
The grammatical categories this description uses — clause type, mood, and the sound patterning noted where it carries the proverb — follow Unseth's framework for describing a proverb rather than only translating it.
The proverb is folk material. The description of how it is put together follows the framework in the work above; the translation and the commentary are mine.
Hear it, and collect the rest →