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The traces of socio-cultural interaction between the ethnic groups that are neighbours to each other but speak different languages are reflected in their languages. Common words and concepts appear in the languages of both ethnic groups. The Caucasus, which is the subject of our article, is a broad geographical region where a great many different ethnic groups live together and have been mixing ethnically with each other for hundreds of years. Our purpose is to study the vocabulary of different ethnic groups' languages to determine the cultural and linguistic interaction between them. It is possible to draw the conclusion from our study that there is widespread ethnic and cultural interaction among all the peoples of the Caucasus.
In this study we analyze the results of a sociolinguistic survey conducted in Hungary in 2004–2005, with the goal of exploring some popular views of the proverb and anti-proverb and their functions in contemporary Hungarian society. Using data collected from 298 subjects, we focus on three major questions. First, our aim was to establish the lists of the proverbs most frequently used nowadays, as well as the ones most popular for variation. Our second goal was to discover our subjects’ thoughts about the use of proverbs and anti-proverbs, as well as about their views of the people who use them. And, last but not least, our third task was to compare what people say about their own usage of proverbs and anti-proverbs to what they think about the ways in which other people use these expressions.The complex analysis of the results of the survey can illumine interesting aspects; for example, the correlation between the subject’s gender and age and the use of proverbs and anti-proverbs. We also have to deal with the contradictions of folk concepts concerning this topic: there is a significant contrast between the ways in which subjects describe their own habits and the ways in which they talk about other people’s use of proverbs and anti-proverbs.
