Within an increasingly multicultural society the largely 'Western' enterprise of Clinical Neuropsychology must endeavour to make assessments relevant to clients who do not speak English and who originate from different cultures. Previous attempts at such assessments have resulted in a largely non-verbal focus to assessments of abstraction, problem solving etc. This study investigates the possibility of developing a verbal 'culture-fair' test, with specific focus on verbal abstract reasoning. An understanding of the universal nature of proverbs has highlighted the utility of proverbs in constructing such a test. The initial aim was to develop the proverbs task, requiring the formation of novel proverbs unfamiliar to participants but containing universal themes. The novel proverbs task and existing measures of abstract reasoning and verbal ability were completed by participants who spoke English as either a first or second language and who originated from a variety of cultures. The scores on the measures were subjected to multivariate analysis. Analysis determined that within language and cultural analyses the proverb task was related to scores on other culturally bound verbal abstract reasoning tests. In addition, both the established 'culture-fair' abstract reasoning task and the proverb task did not differentiate between language or cultural groups. These and further analyses are placed within the literature of 'culture-fair' assessments with reference to clinical practice.