구슬이 서 말이라도 꿰야 보배라
bead-SUBJ hold[?] word[?]-EVEN-IF string[Verb-meaning]-IN-ORDER-TO treasure-[?]
[Something about beads being held and treasure and stringing them together]
This was impossible for me to translate. Lately, I’ve been finding all these Korean proverbs that I really can’t figure out. I get the meaning of this one but individual vocabulary items, like “서” and “말” are what I think of as overloaded homonyms – there are so many possible meanings that I can’t make a decision that narrows it down, even within context. Each of those morphemes has several dozen dictionary entries. I can only guess how they fit together, even given the context of beads and string. I don’t get 보배라 either. Google translate is useless. 보배 is “treasure” but then what is 라? – that’s a verb ending meaning command, or else it can crop up in the rather irregular conjugation of the copula (BE verb), but in that case it’s preceded by morpheme 이 which is the main copula. I’m stumped.
“Beads cannot make a necklace without string.” This is a slight alteration of a translation found online, which is unenlightening vis-a-vis the nuts-and-bolts grammar of the sentence.
I think the point of the proverb is that you need string to string beads – not just beads. You need a certain minimum to get along to something. Not sure what the English equivalent proverb is.
The pictures below are my prayer beads I strung along with 108 bows (prostrations) while on the temple stay in 2010.
