Household Items in the Folk Ritual Superstitions of the English, Russian, and Mari Languages

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to compare folk ritual superstitions of the English, Russian, and Mari languages containing the names of the household goods. All superstitions were chosen using a continuous sampling method. The analysis was prepared using methods of comparison and statistics. All superstitions were divided into four big groups depending on the included lexical unit. Group one is ‘House, parts of the house’. Group two is ‘Kitchen appliances’. Group three is ‘Bed, bedroom accessories’. Group four is ‘Household goods’. The analysis has shown that the biggest number of superstitions with the names of household items is in the Russian language, the biggest group is Group 4 ‘Household Goods’, the most spread units are ‘mirror’ and ‘broom’, the universal units are ‘window’, ‘door’, ‘lock’, ‘table’, ‘spoon’, ‘knife’, ‘cradle’,