Which languages do you speak, are they closely related?
It seems that the effect is heightened when the languages are in different families, or at least have different grammatical structures.
In some other articles on the subject, I've read on effects based on whether a language uses grammatical gender or not. For example children assigning voices to the Sun and Moon in English vs Spanish - in Spanish the voice given would almost always follow the grammatical gender, in English it would be randomly selected.
> For example, in Swedish, the word for future is framtid which literally means “front time”.
It's the same in Danish, but if you have a meeting at 1pm and you want to change it to 2pm (moving it further in to the future, or further "front time", forward in time) you are moving the meeting back.
Introductions to linguistics are littered with poorly translated examples and misunderstood grammar points from languages that aren't even particularly exotic (like Japanese and Chinese). So maybe Aymara, just like Danish, have some back-looking phrases that refers to the future, but I am not convinced that people who speak Aymara, would put the Delorean in reverse, when aiming for the future.
> But Spanish and Greek speakers see it as quantity, as volume taking up space.
Author doesn't even try to explain which linguistic property causes this.
I have heard that in far-off America where they speak a language called English, time is seen not as a straight line but as a round circle, because of phrases like "I've got your six" which refer to a circular clock. Truly, the words used in random phrases are the clearest window into the alien mind.
I can confirm that from point of a spanish spoken viewer here in LATAM. We have had our share of time - decades - of a military fully controlled society, so now living in democracy many expressions or even words/verbs had subtlety changed their usual mean (as it appear in the dictionary), to something else.
I.E. the verb "to order", in spanish it is used more frequently to express the action to put things in their intended configuration ("to order the kitchen"). But in our formerly military controlled LATAM societies there's an extra meaning:
"to establish and enforce/assert a NEW set of rules"
So we use "to order" as a non-official synonym of those verbs (enforce/assert) plus the notion of NEW rules:
"Something different that what we were doing till now it is going to be implemented somehow".
Ordino already had both meanings (arrange and command) in latin and I think it remains true in romance and germanic languages alike. I'm not sure that's really "an extra meaning" in Latin America.
> phrases like "I've got your six" which refer to a circular clock
This particular phrase is borrowed from military jargon, as a reference to one's back/behind.
For example, in aviation, round clock references are used for shorthand to describe angular directions, with center-you, 9-left,12-ahead,3-right, and 6-behind.
Clarity and brevity make this analogy an excellent communication device.
Military pilots learn to watch their-"six".
At the same time, hearing pilots talk about Romeo Papa makes a side observer wonder how this could be related to Shakespear...if at all.
In English the term "before" literally means "in front of". So if you say "the time before today" you are (according to the same logic) actually referring to the past being in front of the present.
I'm also a bit skeptical of the conclusions drawn from these turns of phases. It seems a single language can have multiple inconsistent spatial metaphors in play at the same time. So I think it is a bit overblown to say a language "wires the brain" to think of time in a particular way.
Conclusions are overblown(I guess it wouldn’t get wide appeal otherwise ?), but there is a kernel of truth in that the language at least introduces you to some visions of time you might not have.
From there, not every speaker uses every aspect of any language, people pick and choose the metaphors that makes sense for them, or create and share new ones wholepiece.
It reminds me of how tv broadcast handles late night time, and exposed me as a kid to lenient dates. It actualy had a long lasting impact I think.
Oh I absolutely agree that words and metaphors can shape the way we think about things. I'm just skeptical towards theories that couple this to languages as a whole.
Yes, "the time before you" in en-gb is slightly poetic but could mean either the time in history up to the point where you existed, or it could be the time in the future that is yet to come.
> if you have a meeting at 1pm and you want to change it to 2pm (moving it further in to the future, or further "front time", forward in time) you are moving the meeting back.
In Sweden that is most certainly to move the meeting forward (literally): “flytta fram mötet”.
It could, these terms usually depend on subtle imagined points of reference.
If time is a horizontal line, and you are at 'now' and the meeting is at '1pm', if you imagine the meeting as something which is facing you, then moving it back would push it further into the future and forward would bring it closer to the present. We also usually change the verb to make the metaphor clearer, the meeting was brought forward or pushed back.
Unrelated to time, another subtle difference which I think depends on how we imagine things spatially in different languages is 'coming' Vs 'going'. In English if you're at the park and I'm leaving my home to meet you the natural phrasing is to say that I'm "coming" (with the point of reference being you/the park), but in Spanish I'm "going", with the point of reference being me/my home.
"Flytta fram" is actually used in both senses in Swedish, see references to Språklådan and Språket i P1 below. Both sources suggest avoiding the construct altogether, and use the more literal "tidigarelägga" and "senarelägga" instead (i.e. "place earlier" and "place later").
I haven't read the paper but I did read the article.
I imagine this is a case of reporter not understanding the research. This is clearly about linguistic relativism. There's a clear difference between how languages like Mandarin and English talk about time but the difference within indoeuropean languages is much smaller. I buy into Mandarin vs English shifting how one thinks about time (this isn't a new concept) but any secondary language changing how one views time (in a significant way) I'm skeptical. English and Spanish (which were used as examples) speak about time almost the same way. And if you're going to talk about Mandarin, there are much better examples than that they use a vertical axis instead of a horizonal (which doesn't mean they use both.)
But the article was written by the researchers, at least that's indicated by the first paragraph: "My new study – which I worked on with linguist Emanuel Bylund"
> They arranged the former horizontally, with the young Brad Pitt to the left and the old Brad Pitt to the right. But the same people arranged the pictures of Jet Li vertically, with young Jet Li appearing at the top and old Jet Li appearing at the bottom
I thought chinese writing was traditionally done from the top downwards ie. vertically. If so, the effect quoted might well be attributable more to that.
There are subtle differences everywhere which could have real framing effects or make no difference at all except to the expression itself.
In English one spends time, for example, much like one spends money. I love that as a metaphor but in Spanish you don't spend time, you pass time.
Does that reflect some transactional nature of English compared to Spanish, or nothing significant at all? Probably the latter, but I'll admit to enjoying these nuances.
Along the same line, in English one pays attention where in Spanish one lends it. Does the Spanish language bake in that exchanges should be fairly reciprocal? No idea, but fun to think about.
I'm sceptical of the experiment claiming to show that whether Chinese-English bilinguals use the horizontal or vertical axis to order people by age is influenced by language (as cued by the ethnicity of the person in the photo).
The description makes it sound as if 上/下 [shàng/xià] (up/down) were the dominant terms to express time in Mandarin (as exemplified by 上个星期/下个星期 [shàng gè xīng qī/xià gè xīng qī] (previous week/next week)). However, there are at least two other metaphors.
One is 去/来 [qù/lái] (go/come), e.g. in 去年/来年 [qù nián/lái nián] (previous year/next year) or 过去/未来 [guò qù/wèi lái] (past/future).
The other is 前/后 [qián/hòu] (front/back) e.g. in 以前/以后 [yǐ qián/yǐ hòu] (before/after) or 前天/后天 [qián tiān/hòu tiān] (the day before yesterday/the day after tomorrow).
Now if you wanted to use one of those combinations to describe the age of two persons, you'd use 前辈/后辈 [qián bèi/hòu bèi] (elder generation/younger generation). That's not only not vertical, it also orders them by time of birth and not by age.
So I don't think you can use linguistic phenomena to explain why Chinese-English bilinguals would put a young Chinese person above an older Chinese person, if the effect is even real at all. (There were only 32 participants in the experiment.)
Interesting case: in Thai (which is my mother tongue), both the words "วันหน้า" (literally "front day") and "วันหลัง" (literally "back day" or "behind day") both mean "(in a) later (day)". (Yes, it's kinda illogical, like "flammable" vs "inflammable".)
Personally, I think of the past being on the left, and the future being on the right. (Thai is written from left to right, like English.)
I would say the same effect applies to programming languages too.
Learning languages with different "grammar" allows one to think about the same problem in different parallel ways. For example by being exposed to a functional language one is able to approach a particular task from a different angle even if doing OOP.
The same way people were able to reason using distance or volume when estimating time in the article.
The difficult part I suppose is figuring out which paradigm is most appropriate for the given situation.
On the topic of time-reference - An interesting cultural aspect when refering to 'tomorrow', a Western speaker means rather shortly, quite possibly next day.
Yet an Arabic speaker, when saying 'bukra', in fact may imply some indefinite point in future, quite possible not at all.
Just as being on-time or late may practically mean different allowances in different cultures.
Sure, there're other more precise expressions, perhaps being bilingual would expand one's perception of time-referencing.
Well, it is not Arabic only, "mañana" in Spanish means actually tomorrow, but often it is intended as "some time in the future", more like "soon" but also "not now and not so soon".
In Italian it is almost the same for "domani", with a lot of nuances depending on the context.
Only as an example, in Italian "Domani puoi sempre fare questo" which would translate literally to (and is probably perceived by a foreigner as) "Tomorrow you can always do this" actually means "In the future (indefinite, or "any time") you can still do this" (usually meaning reverting a present decision).
> They arranged the former horizontally, with the young Brad Pitt to the left and the old Brad Pitt to the right. But the same people arranged the pictures of Jet Li vertically, with young Jet Li appearing at the top and old Jet Li appearing at the bottom.
It is actually surprising that researchers asked same group of people both questions. Shouldn't they had randomly separated their subjects into "Jet Li" and "Bradd Pitt" groups and asked each group only one question, so that subjects do not realize what is the purpose of the experiment?
Maybe if someone grew up at least bilingual they have different concepts built into their “brains” as children. I can only attest that learning Spanish or English as a foreign language in school doesn’t change your own perception of time. So the last statement of the article is non sequitor.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadFor a few years I was also a language teacher and this article explains one of the things students have problems understanding.
I think that's what the entire article is about. Like, the whole point of it.
It seems that the effect is heightened when the languages are in different families, or at least have different grammatical structures.
In some other articles on the subject, I've read on effects based on whether a language uses grammatical gender or not. For example children assigning voices to the Sun and Moon in English vs Spanish - in Spanish the voice given would almost always follow the grammatical gender, in English it would be randomly selected.
Not exactly mind blowing, but measurable.
It's the same in Danish, but if you have a meeting at 1pm and you want to change it to 2pm (moving it further in to the future, or further "front time", forward in time) you are moving the meeting back.
Introductions to linguistics are littered with poorly translated examples and misunderstood grammar points from languages that aren't even particularly exotic (like Japanese and Chinese). So maybe Aymara, just like Danish, have some back-looking phrases that refers to the future, but I am not convinced that people who speak Aymara, would put the Delorean in reverse, when aiming for the future.
> But Spanish and Greek speakers see it as quantity, as volume taking up space.
Author doesn't even try to explain which linguistic property causes this.
Could 'back' just mean 'further away'? If you move a box further down a storage room, you also move it 'further back', don't you?
If you bring something back, you move it from where you are to where it belongs. "Back up!" means "move away!".
Your back is not just behind you but further away from your front.
Not sure if it has much to do with time per se.
I.E. the verb "to order", in spanish it is used more frequently to express the action to put things in their intended configuration ("to order the kitchen"). But in our formerly military controlled LATAM societies there's an extra meaning:
"to establish and enforce/assert a NEW set of rules"
So we use "to order" as a non-official synonym of those verbs (enforce/assert) plus the notion of NEW rules:
"Something different that what we were doing till now it is going to be implemented somehow".
This particular phrase is borrowed from military jargon, as a reference to one's back/behind.
For example, in aviation, round clock references are used for shorthand to describe angular directions, with center-you, 9-left,12-ahead,3-right, and 6-behind.
Clarity and brevity make this analogy an excellent communication device.
Military pilots learn to watch their-"six".
At the same time, hearing pilots talk about Romeo Papa makes a side observer wonder how this could be related to Shakespear...if at all.
I'm also a bit skeptical of the conclusions drawn from these turns of phases. It seems a single language can have multiple inconsistent spatial metaphors in play at the same time. So I think it is a bit overblown to say a language "wires the brain" to think of time in a particular way.
From there, not every speaker uses every aspect of any language, people pick and choose the metaphors that makes sense for them, or create and share new ones wholepiece.
It reminds me of how tv broadcast handles late night time, and exposed me as a kid to lenient dates. It actualy had a long lasting impact I think.
In Sweden that is most certainly to move the meeting forward (literally): “flytta fram mötet”.
Moving it ”back” to the future makes no sense...
If time is a horizontal line, and you are at 'now' and the meeting is at '1pm', if you imagine the meeting as something which is facing you, then moving it back would push it further into the future and forward would bring it closer to the present. We also usually change the verb to make the metaphor clearer, the meeting was brought forward or pushed back.
Unrelated to time, another subtle difference which I think depends on how we imagine things spatially in different languages is 'coming' Vs 'going'. In English if you're at the park and I'm leaving my home to meet you the natural phrasing is to say that I'm "coming" (with the point of reference being you/the park), but in Spanish I'm "going", with the point of reference being me/my home.
http://www3.sprakochfolkminnen.se/sprakladan/ShowSearch.aspx...
https://www.facebook.com/Spraketip1/posts/10158189290675512/
I imagine this is a case of reporter not understanding the research. This is clearly about linguistic relativism. There's a clear difference between how languages like Mandarin and English talk about time but the difference within indoeuropean languages is much smaller. I buy into Mandarin vs English shifting how one thinks about time (this isn't a new concept) but any secondary language changing how one views time (in a significant way) I'm skeptical. English and Spanish (which were used as examples) speak about time almost the same way. And if you're going to talk about Mandarin, there are much better examples than that they use a vertical axis instead of a horizonal (which doesn't mean they use both.)
I thought chinese writing was traditionally done from the top downwards ie. vertically. If so, the effect quoted might well be attributable more to that.
In English one spends time, for example, much like one spends money. I love that as a metaphor but in Spanish you don't spend time, you pass time.
Does that reflect some transactional nature of English compared to Spanish, or nothing significant at all? Probably the latter, but I'll admit to enjoying these nuances.
Along the same line, in English one pays attention where in Spanish one lends it. Does the Spanish language bake in that exchanges should be fairly reciprocal? No idea, but fun to think about.
British English uses both 'spend' and 'pass'. In particular hobbies (leisure activities) are known as passtimes.
"How do you pass your time?" is not a common expression though but the concept is available, and used sometimes.
People also say things like "what do you do with your [spare] time?".
Minor nit - it's "pastime" (although it does come from "passe tyme" and "passe-temps")
The description makes it sound as if 上/下 [shàng/xià] (up/down) were the dominant terms to express time in Mandarin (as exemplified by 上个星期/下个星期 [shàng gè xīng qī/xià gè xīng qī] (previous week/next week)). However, there are at least two other metaphors.
One is 去/来 [qù/lái] (go/come), e.g. in 去年/来年 [qù nián/lái nián] (previous year/next year) or 过去/未来 [guò qù/wèi lái] (past/future).
The other is 前/后 [qián/hòu] (front/back) e.g. in 以前/以后 [yǐ qián/yǐ hòu] (before/after) or 前天/后天 [qián tiān/hòu tiān] (the day before yesterday/the day after tomorrow).
Now if you wanted to use one of those combinations to describe the age of two persons, you'd use 前辈/后辈 [qián bèi/hòu bèi] (elder generation/younger generation). That's not only not vertical, it also orders them by time of birth and not by age.
So I don't think you can use linguistic phenomena to explain why Chinese-English bilinguals would put a young Chinese person above an older Chinese person, if the effect is even real at all. (There were only 32 participants in the experiment.)
Personally, I think of the past being on the left, and the future being on the right. (Thai is written from left to right, like English.)
Learning languages with different "grammar" allows one to think about the same problem in different parallel ways. For example by being exposed to a functional language one is able to approach a particular task from a different angle even if doing OOP.
The same way people were able to reason using distance or volume when estimating time in the article.
The difficult part I suppose is figuring out which paradigm is most appropriate for the given situation.
Yet an Arabic speaker, when saying 'bukra', in fact may imply some indefinite point in future, quite possible not at all.
Just as being on-time or late may practically mean different allowances in different cultures.
Sure, there're other more precise expressions, perhaps being bilingual would expand one's perception of time-referencing.
In Italian it is almost the same for "domani", with a lot of nuances depending on the context.
Only as an example, in Italian "Domani puoi sempre fare questo" which would translate literally to (and is probably perceived by a foreigner as) "Tomorrow you can always do this" actually means "In the future (indefinite, or "any time") you can still do this" (usually meaning reverting a present decision).
It is actually surprising that researchers asked same group of people both questions. Shouldn't they had randomly separated their subjects into "Jet Li" and "Bradd Pitt" groups and asked each group only one question, so that subjects do not realize what is the purpose of the experiment?