THE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF UZBEK AND ENGLISH PROVERBS

Proverbs are short, traditional sayings that keep the wisdom, values and life experience of people. This article compares 31 English proverbs with their Uzbek counterparts in order to find out how far the two languages express the same ideas and how their images differ. The material was analysed with comparative, semantic and thematic methods, and every pair was classified by its degree of equivalence. The results show that full equivalents are rare, partial equivalents form a larger group, while more than half of the pairs are analogues that share the same meaning but use completely different images. The most common themes are work and time, human relations, justice, caution and attitude to the past. The study concludes that the two peoples share many universal values, but express them through images taken from their own way of life: English proverbs often refer to the kitchen, trade and household animals, while Uzbek proverbs draw on pastoral life, bread and salt, the moon and symbolic numbers. The findings can be used in teaching English, in translation practice and in further paremiological research.