more on "break a leg"

[Dave Wilton]

You may be looking at culture too broadly, at least in terms of the English
expression.

The English phrase is almost exclusively associated with the theater, a
profession that has many similar superstitions (e.g., it is bad luck to
refer to "Macbeth" by its name, "the Scottish play" is preferred). The fact
that there is no general fear of wishing someone good luck does not militate
against such a superstition in a specific subculture. I don't know the
contexts in which the similar phrases in other languages are used, so I
can't speak to them.

Then again, there is also the rich tradition of the jinx, of which "break a
leg" is merely one example. So I wouldn't grant that there is no general
superstition against wishing someone good luck.



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Victor
Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2009 12:21 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: more on "break a leg"

There seems to be more than just superstition working in the
English/German/Yiddish version of "break a leg". First, I mentioned
previously the Russian equivalent, which is "ni pukha ni pera", which
equally avoids the direct topic and is a *negative* wish. I have just
been reminded of the Italian "In bocca al lupo" that essentially implies
the same thing. Unlike the other expressions, however, the response is
not the equivalent of "Go to hell!" or "[Go] to the Devil!", but rather
a more direct responsive "crepi il lupo!"

I find the explanation that these are all formed in response to some
taboo against wishing good luck or even evil eye avoidance superstition
wanting. All these languages also have common direct expressions meant
to communicate similar sentiment both in general and specific settings
and there is little evidence (of course, how would one go about
collecting it?) that these are recently formed/used. In other words,
although there is plenty of traditional superstition in the underlying
cultures, it is a somewhat far-fetched explanation that the respective
taboos and superstitions have been somehow relaxed over the past 100-200
years allowing more direct well-wishing (particularly in the form of
expressing wishes for good luck). East Asian cultures, on the other
hand, all use tokens and symbols (or numbers, which is really the same
thing) to express good luck wishes (or desires). If they also have some
counterintuitive expressions that express something equally negative to
the breaking leg/hunting failure/facing a wolf, I certainly would like
to find out about it. I find it hard to imagine, for example, an
exchange in Japanese that sounds like, "May you break your neck, my
friend!--Drop dead!" There might be some Christian/Buddhist dichotomy
here, but, again, I would like there to be some direct evidence of this
rather than mere speculation based on coincidence.

Any guesses? Or, more to the point, any evidence?

    VS-)

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