RIDDLES ABOUT CELESTIAL OBJECTS AND NATURE PHENOMENA IN СOLOMBIAN LINGUOCULTURE

Abstract

The article presents a study of the seven most common images of nature phenomena in folklore (the sun, the moon, the stars, the day, the night, the wind, the rain) in Colombian riddles. The riddle is one of the oldest genres of oral folk art, a means of preserving cultural memory, educating ingenuity and creative thinking. The article reflects the stages of the development of Colombian riddles from the appearance of the enigmatic genre in Europe, the popularization of the riddle in Spanish, its export to the New World to the acquisition of national-specific Colombian features that accumulated the features of European, Indigenous and African cultures. The material of the article was about 300 Colombian riddles, most of which were taken from collections of traditional riddles of the departments of Colombia; riddles posted in Colombian Internet sources. The article also presents the results of a linguistic experiment conducted among Russian and Colombian youth to solve Colombian riddles in Spanish. The main research methods are semantic, interpretative, linguoculturological analysis, cultural commentary. The main objective of the article is to analyze the ethnolinguistic features of the figurative representation of nature in the Colombian linguoculture, as well as to find out how modern youth understands the metaphorical description of natural phenomena in riddles. The article finds that the Colombian riddles combine traditional Spanish cryptic texts and the realities of everyday life, cultural and religious associations peculiar to Colombia. Refs 8.