Does time work differently in different languages? - Hopi Time

[@screamingweevil3410]

"How do the Hopi live without tense?!" Probably pretty relaxed.

[@ff_crafter]

My language don't have tense (Indonesian, Sundanese, Malay, Javanese)

[@rizakharistaramdhani1782]

@@ff_crafter yeah but javanese and sundanese have 3 kinds of speech styles and learn all of that 3 styles gave me headache.b

[@msmx9088]

Screaming Weevil r/technically the truth

[@God-ch8lq]

my language has 4 times, past, future, present, and command (ציווי) command is for when you wanna give someone urgent orders

[@michaelcarrasquillo4781]

Ahhhh clever lol

[@ThePrinceofParthia]

I love the Aymara system, it makes intuitive sense. The past has already happened, of course you can see it. The future is unknown however, so you can't see it! Not a linguist, just struck by this epiphany whilst watching your excellent video :)

[@Eisenwulf666]

Alexander Waters in terry Pratchett 's Discworld series Trolls thinks exactly like that, i wonder if he knew about this language or just had the idea out of the blue

[@IsaacMayerCreativeWorks]

Eisenwulf666 Exactly what I was thinking of! "The long-off days of far ahead"

[@eefaaf]

In classic Greek the same applied: www.thelivingtheory.com/blog/backing-into-the-future-the-simple-reason-ancient-greeks-valued-the-present-more-than-us

[@adamd0ggg2]

That makes sense. However, for me its the opposite. I look forward, to move forward. And I move forward in time because I can do stuff in the future. I can not change the past which I am not looking at.

[@timothymclean]

It's all a matter of which metaphor sounds most poetic to you (or, rather, your distant ancestors who were speaking the precursor to your language).

[@einootspork]

The way Aymara does it makes a lot of sense from a metaphorical point of view. You can see (remember) the past, but the future is a mystery.

[@PlushieBastet]

As a person who lives in Peru, I've been told said metaphor has a cultural aspect to it as well: Just as Aymara women tend to carry their chidren on their backs, the future is difficult to see or predict but its weight (impact?) in your life is important.

[@instaurareomniainchristo5634]

Yes, it's all about Filosofy

[@derekbrown9154]

Yes, the metaphor most languages use is one of movement. You walk with your eyes forward, so the direction of temporal movement (towards the future) is "forward". However the metaphor of being able to see the past while the future is unknown also makes perfect sense.

[@TiroDvD]

Author Terry Prachette in his humorous fantasy series Disc World has trolls view us walking backwards in time with the same reasoning. (You can see the past, but not the future).

[@MSpencer1998]

The past is history. The future is a mystery. Right now is a gift, that is why it is called "The Present."

[@daviddavidson9954]

You missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a joke about Back to the Future and the Aymara by the way

[@MagusMarquillin]

Doc! You built a _time machine_... out of a *Language?!*

[@christosvoskresye]

He could throw in STNG while he's at it.

[@shiningarmor2838]

christosvoskresye Worf was wrong!

[@cyalknight]

I was just thinking of this! Though when walking or driving, the future is in front. To walk in heavy traffic is like trying to predict the future. Would someone experiencing time in reverse look out the back window or the front window of the car he is driving forward?

[@santiagochauprincipe4885]

We are going back to the future... We will go... We will be going...

[@Pfhorrest]

For archaeologists and paleontologists, up is later and down is earlier. Also for people whose "filing system" is ever-growing layers of papers on their desks.

[@davidwuhrer6704]

Down is the direction things go with time. Things fall down toward a center of gravity, wind blows downwind, so I find it quite natural that the future is down in time, and the past is up. You are right though about the top of a stack being the youngest layer, and the bottom the oldest. Blogs also sort posts this way, even though it goes against the direction text within a post is read (with the top of a paragraph being the more towards the past, and the bottom closer to the future), for the benefit of readers who are more interested in recent developments that the history. With email clients, it is a matter of preference if you want the latest on top or bottom.

[@rahuldhargalkar]

Very well noted. Geologists too :)

[@LowestofheDead]

The deeper your layers of paper, the more your life is like an archaeologist

[@Fif0l]

Yeah, the fossil record is pretty much a pile of paper.

[@elloo98]

You then have astronomers who have the rather paradoxical statement of forwards being backwards (Actually outwards being backwards but still)

[@lucmedina]

I don't understand the "rare", "unique" thing about Aymara language for having the past in front of the eyes and the future at the back. English language is exactly the same! "Before" means in the past but also in front, as in "the man standing before me". And "after" means in the future as well as behind ("the man standing after me").

[@florin-titusniculescu5871]

lucmedina ... wow. Quite so. Be-fore & fore-ward. After & after-wards.

[@fancifuldevices]

Wow you just blew my mind

[@JanoTuotanto]

Also English has vertical dimension of time. Things are over afterwards .

[@fntime]

Somebody get a rope~

[@vwlh8r]

In English we look back on our lives and look forward to the future. Guess we have some of both ways of referring to time and space.

[@englishdprmapping1613]

So the Aymara have their... BACK TO THE FUTURE?

[@yocko5771]

I find it more logical, you can "see" the past but you cant "see" the future. Therefore your eyes is facing the past and you have your back to the future.

[@sundalongpatpat]

@@yocko5771 Nah. It's a reference to a Movie Series called Back to the Future. Idk if you missed the joke or you just want to add info.

[@danielcuevas5899]

I’m getting “Arrival” vibes from this video.

[@EranBZD]

Was really looking for a comment about "Arrival". This movie is based on the Sapir-Whorf theory and even mentions it. I'm really surprised that he didn't mention it in the video, it was out more than half a year before this video.

[@wheedler]

I always wish you would discuss a topic just a little further. Even without animation, I could listen to an hour of this as a podcast or something.

[@widmawod]

You're so good at explaining complex things! I live in Italy and I don't have that much linguistic information because in Italy linguistics is not really a common thing. I know what I know because of you! Thanks!

[@arturocevallossoto5203]

Well. While living in Italy I was exposed to a lot of linguistic diversity. Primarily, Standard Italian vs. Venetian. One can eventually notice these differences. You can study Italian linguistics :P

[@minsklit5811]

Linguista in erba Saame

[@widmawod]

+Arturo Cervallos Soto _Non è la stessa cosa..._ ("It's not the same.")

[@logosloki]

I can imagine Italian linguistics books would be weighty volumes what with hand gestures having to be included in the discussion. /jk.

[@deithlan]

Seeing your profile picture now, after 5 years, I imagine you had quite the journey, eh?

[@oklahomahank2378]

I have been reading about the traditional Japanese time keeping system. Hours changed their duration based on the season. So there were the same number of hours in day and night all year, but the length of each hour changed.

[@sd-ch2cq]

That's how it also was in Europe, until they changed from sun-dials to mechanical clocks

[@JanIvarKorsbakken]

"Before" and "after" in Chinese is not usually expressed as "up" or "down", like the video states. If you want to say that something occurred before or after something else, you usually use the words 前 or 以前, which literally means "in front of" or "before", and 后 or 以后, which means literally "behind" or "after". So it's pretty much the same metaphor as in English. Where you do use "up" and "down" (上 and 下), it's usually to express the idea of "previous" and "next", like 上次 ("last time / the previous time", literally "up-time" or "over-time") and 下次 ("next time", literally "down-time" or "under-time"). In some contexts it can also be used to express "former" and "latter" or "first" and "second" if you are talking about two items (such as the two volumes of a two-volume literary work). The reason, as others have stated, might be that Chinese at one stage was most often written vertically, from top to bottom. But "up" and "down" is not generally how you express "before" and "after" in time in Chinese.

[@aatamyjosephling3521]

Jan Ivar Korsbakken You spoke out what I was about to comment. 谢谢你 :3

[@archibald-yc5le]

Jan Ivar Korsbakken 上下 concept is often explained by how the Chinese [and all the people] read texts and orientate in a text. 上 - what is written above => written BEFORE, 下 - what is written below => LATER. Even in speech they say 上述 UP-TELL - "afore-mentioned" and ...如下 HOW-DOWN "as follows". As we see, English also has these concepts but they are used only in (meta)texts, as they are in any written language tradition.

[@chrisy366]

I just realised mandarin uses the aymara system as well! see the "front" is before and "back" is after. "exam's front"(考试之前) means before the exam.!

[@gslidevideotester8592]

NativLang is actually correct in this case, but I consider this usage (up/down) archaic. The book zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%8A%E4%B8%8B%E4%BA%94%E5%8D%83%E5%B9%B4 上下五千年 is one example of this (relatively archaic) usage.

[@BlinkyLass]

On archaic usage of 上下, there's also 上午/中午/下午, fixed expressions for morning, noon, and afternoon, which mean 'up/above noon', 'middle noon', and 'down/below noon'. It's a lot more interesting once you start digging into dialectal variation on how different Chinese languages call these time slots, however. Mornings are also called 早上 'early up', 上半天 'up half day', 前半天 'front half day', etc. Perhaps most interesting is that mornings are called 下早 'down early' in Taiwanese Hokkien, pronounced e-tsái-á. How this exception came to be I'm not too sure.

[@oliveranderson7264]

The Aymara concept also exists in my native language of Kinyarwanda: In front of/facing = Imbere Before= Mbere Behind= Inyuma After= Nyuma/Hanyuma

[@googolplexbyte]

The Aymara concept also exist in my native language of English: In front of/facing = Fore Before= Before Behind= Aft After= After REPLY

[@es2903]

Yes, as in "She enters before me" means that in the past (and in front of me) she entered, while "She enters after me" means that in the future (and behind me) she entered.

[@oliveranderson7264]

googolplexbyte Very interesting indeed !

[@googolplexbyte]

It's odd that linguists would treat this as special. It must be true of many languages.

[@es2903]

Another example is ante, which means "in front of" or "before" like in anterior, and post which means "behind" or "in the future" like posterior or post-war.

[@andreaspatsalides1914]

I thought about Aymara's concept of time months before knowing about it; and it all makes sense. We can only see the past, so everything that has happened till now is in front of us, we cant see the future, thus the future is behind us. We are just moving backwards through time

[@DreamingSpanish]

Even a language as major as Japanese uses "forward" (前, mae) to mean "before" and "back" (後, ato) to mean "later".

[@ethanarnold9144]

I've been studying Japanese for years, and it that always somehow *made sense* to me. I pretty much just accepted it as obvious without a second thought. Now that I think about it, it's pretty amazing... and a bit unsettling that I didn't notice at all.

[@东皇太一-k7y]

前 後was borrowed from Chinese..

[@ethanarnold9144]

The characters are certainly derived from Chinese characters, but the readings indicate that the words are native Japanese, and not borrowed from (but maybe influenced by) Chinese.

[@weiwu918]

Well if you happen to know some Chinese, 之前 means "before (this)" and 之后 means "after (this)". It is also used this way in the classical Chinese literature.

[@apteropith]

This happens in English too; for both future events and distant objects "forward" often means towards the speaker while "back" means away, as though these things and events are facing us.

[@YummYakitori]

Yes morning in Chinese is 上午 (above noon) and afternoon in Chinese is 下午 (below noon). And in ancient China people divided time into parts known as "時辰", equivalent to 2 hours today, and each "時辰" was further divided into sections of 5 minutes known as "字".

[@ZeSheshamHahu]

Aymara time reminded me of Trolls in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. In Troll language and philosophy they belive they travel backwards in time because they can see the past but the future is unseen. They also have a base 4 counting system. I wonder if Pratchett just made it up or did he hear about unique language features.

[@Elsenoromniano]

He did hear about the Aymara.

[@Neenerella333]

RIP Terry. One of my favorites.

[@stamasd8500]

I'm just going through the whole Discworld series (about halfway through) and was going to comment on the same thing.

[@NeoColPelo]

In Seneca's 'On the shortness of life' there's a strikingly similar vision of time like that of Aymara language speakers, as the Roman philosopher opposes that vision to the one he sees dominant in the Roman ruling class (described as 'occupati', in the sense that they are busy not only working and never stopping doing something in the present, but also filling their future with projects, expectations etc.). Excellent video, I was looking forward it!!!

[@misseli1]

6:15 I was learning a little bit about ancient Hebrew recently, and apparently they had a similar concept of time like the Aymara speakers. They would say one's past was in front of them, and that one's future was behind them because one can't see the future.

[@filolinguista5576]

I speak Tzotzil (A Mayan language spoken in Chiapas, Mexico) as a second language. And while learning it, I discovered that the way Aymaras conceive time is the same as Tzotzils do. Which probably means that this notion of time is common to many native cultures (pre-European) in the whole continent.

[@rijahun6721]

Been waiting for you NativLang!

[@matthagen67]

Wow, that's one helluva great topic to discuss! :)

[@chrisy366]

I just realized mandarin uses the Aymara system as well! In Chinese forward (前) also means past. for example "exam's forward(literal translation)" means "before the exam", and it is the most common way for us to say it. I realized it when I looked at a (poorly) translated auditing term called "Roll-forward test". I was so confused like why it is necessary to test something in the past, but when I saw the english version I understood it meant to test things in the future.

[@chelsey8737]

I watched this when it came out and a couple of times since then but it was actually incredibly useful for one of my classes this semester. We were talking about how language influences the way people think and the way they act and I used the Hopi example in an assignment. Its pretty nice putting my random KZbin tangents to good work. So thanks for getting me through that

[@chakacaca1372]

If you get to the root of what language is doing, expressing predictive symbolic thought for particular tribal perspectives-- this makes perfect sense. Language doesn't shape thinking, thinking shapes language.

[@Elsenoromniano]

Well, some experiment, aprticularly the ones made by Choi et Bowerman, shows that at least in some sense language influences also how we think about a thing in a small scale when we are using it or processing it. For example Spanish and English speakers focused the atention more in different things (type of motion for english speakers, direction in spanish ones) when they had to narrate a story. Funny thing bilingual speakers, focused their atention more in one thing or the other depending on what language they had to tell the story. But when they had a visual representation on hte story they did remember the same. Of course that is far from the Sapir hypothesis, but hey, it's something.

[@MordredMS]

Perhaps it is some sort of "feedback loop". Different societies think differently and shape their languages accordingly. However, as these different societies come in contact with each other, discover each other's way of thinking, and one of them becomes dominant in some way, they find it hard to move away from their own, shall we say, "thought matrix", because it's what their language is based on. Even Saussure teaches us that the way we split up and categorise and analyse reality is a part of our langue. However, I would not go as far as agreeing with the Sapir hypothesis, because I'm pretty sure that, if you look closely enough, you will find ways of expressing time in just about any language. Maybe they will be radically different and more complex than ours, but they will be there. After all, the difference between the future being "up" or "right" or "left" is fairly superficial.

[@Elsenoromniano]

Well Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has three varieties or flavours. The strong Sapir-Whorf hypotesis, which is the original proposed by Whorf (Sapir only made a pasing quote in a book), the soft,, that language influences tought and the light one, that language has connections for how we thought. The strong one is discardedalmost without a doubt, the debate is in what extent the light one or the soft one are true and if always or only in certain specific conditions.

[@chakacaca1372]

Language is cultural form among many other cultural forms. The Ancient Greeks knew of the concept of zero yet never employed; so it's not just languages it is also mathematics-- all symbol forms are being shaped by that particular cultural world. As Oswald Spengler would point out it ends up shaping the destiny of an entire people.

[@gnarthdarkanen7464]

Gonna tentatively stem from MordredMS up there... Not that I think it's entirely best described as a "feedback loop" exactly, but societies last a lot longer than individuals. In that sense, so do languages, but they change over time... From a starting point "birth" of a language, the concepts of the people using it set the structure and conventional concepts. And these can be radically different from one "society" to another. (See Asian v Western Europe for example)... In either case, the concepts and conventions work just fine for ranking and filing and categorizing the world and even the universe around the people... until it doesn't so much anymore. Then there's struggle and debate... Then there's some "break through", and a new concept is born and spread, people work out the kinks and bugs, and it's adapted to the linguistics of all involved. For some more isolated societies, their own "break throughs" are easier to dismiss as "anecdotal" but they didn't just come out of a vacuum. The concepts that really govern how a people recognize time and its motion, spacial sense, or lack thereof are more cultural than linguistic. Yet, as they find reasons to alter those views and concepts, so the language will also adapt to allow for it... I can't speak to it's absolute authenticity, but Nat. Geo. had a documentary a few years back about a people in South America. They were among the last "tribes" with limited contact with outsiders, and they seemed to struggle immensely with the exercise of organizing pictures in a row to tell a story. (Forgive me on this one, but it was a few years back that I saw it...) There were other signs as well that while they could organize tasks and tell when it was morning or nightfall, they just didn't seem to conceive of a deep past (more than a couple days) or the future... So maybe the concepts of time being cultural, only come together for language and expression as they become really useful to acknowledge or understand. :o)

[@GlenSify]

This is seriously one of the best channels on KZbin. I've never Patreon'd anything but I'm looking at it now.

[@MrAlvarogame]

YEAH! NativLang video dammit!

[@namingisdifficult408]

MrAlvarogame yep

[@t.m.carter4171]

Hello Friedrich!

[@Neenerella333]

MrAlvarogame I love unbridled joy at learning. Your enthusiasm is contagious.

[@metumortis6323]

But...I'm already subscribed for language! should unsubscribe then resubscribe?

[@mattkuhn6634]

Well if you do, make sure you click the bell icon to be notified of all new videos. ;)

[@mcshit3359]

Yes

[@MyllenaTofeko]

HELL YEAH! Love this video! Being French and living in Finland for two years now, I observed a funny thing regarding the way Finns talk about time. To say for example "its six thirty (6:30)" they literally say "it's half seven" ("puoli seitsemän"), implicitly saying it's half BEFORE seven, which sounds really weird to me. So I always have to mentally convert those "the hour and a half" times into "half before the hour" to express in Finnish. Once I asked time to a Finn, and he answered in English: "it's half one". It was 12:30. :D Anyways. Cheers from Finland! (Deborah)

[@adriepram]

Whoa, Indonesian here, and we do tell time just like that. Do any other Nordic countries have the same system to tell time? Actually we do both interchangeably, to tell 6.30 we could say either just "Enam tiga puluh" (six thirty) OR 'Setengah tujuh' (literally half seven). Now imagine if I have to learn Finnish in a class that uses English as the language of instruction. I have to convert that twice...

[@eskuAdradit0]

german does it too.

[@beethovenjunkie]

German does it to, and depending on the region, 6.45 is either quarter to seven or three-quarters seven. 6.15 is either quarter after six or quarter 7. The latter way of telling time is not easy to learn for people who haven't grown up with it. The concept is basically that you say how much of this hour has passed. So at 6.15 a quarter of the seventh hour has passed.

[@wheedler]

In British English, half seven is 7:30.

[@nelsonricardo3729]

I'm American, so: "Half seven? You mean 3:30?"

[@Banlieueish]

I subscribed to your channel one month ago, since then I always keep an eye on your contents. I am a student in Classic Philology and your videos have such an impact on me! Thank you very much for your videos!

[@gyurto]

Have you seen the movie called Arrival? Because it is basically about this. Maybe in the next episode of this you should mention it or something.

[@kaisle8412]

A NativLang video about the heptapods in Arrival would be amazing

[@TheJosephB333]

Gyurto Design or even better. "Stories of your life" by Ted Chiang. The story arrival was biased on. He goes into more detail about how ones perception could be altered by language. And is only about 60 pages long Fun fact, the movie "lucy" was also biased on one of his other short stories, about a man who became exponentially smarter, except his ending was just a tad better than (spoilers) "I am become internet!"

[@gyurto]

As you mentioned Lucy what if the languages can make your logic simpler or something. You see complex things more easily. Like when they say you think more logically in a second language that you have learned I know why is this but what if it has something to do with the languages?

[@TheJosephB333]

I'm not sure, but colour recognition is probably affected by language. Russians seporate reds and pinks into three main catagories and not two, so can more easily differentiate between those colours. Similarly, some african tribes link green and blue into the same catagory, and so have real difficulty destingushing greens and blues, but they have more catagories for green and can very easily destinguish greens that those speaking english can not. There was a bbc documentary focusing on this a year or two back. "Do you see what I see?" I think it was called.

[@9365fall]

I didn't like the movie exactly because of that. The idea that language dictates reality seems innocent, but the context that came to mind it to me isn't a neat concept but a token reason based in bias. Sentiments like "Of course the Hopi lived in a postindustrial society and are naturally poor today, they didn't even understand a clock, how could they ever compete with Europeans!" Is sorta like other statements and ideas that misconstrue differences and quirks in culture for different levels of humanity, like the idea that people of African descent can't process information as good as Europeans, or plan for the future.

[@M1574R]

Thank you for covering this topic. I've been interested in the implications of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for a long time, even though it has been largely discredited. The intersections of language, culture, and thought are fascinating.

[@kyihko]

At school in my German class (ih Germany) we talked about differences in certain languages, like you did in this video. But we talked about "Pirahã", a language from South America with only a few speakers today. It's a special language, because there are e.g. no terms for colors, only the numbers "one", "two" and "much/many" and it isn't a recursive language so there isn't something like subordinate clauses, which exist e.g. in the Indo-European language family.

[@erickr404]

I missed Pirahã too! It has a lot of linguistic weirdness.

[@shrimpbisque]

I was wondering if someone would mention Piraha. I did my anthro 101 project on their number system (or lack thereof). It's fascinating how differently they think in terms of concepts whose extent and ubiquity we take for granted.

[@elliotvernon7971]

Piraha has been shown to have recursion in numerous linguistics studies.

[@b.sylphaen]

Thanks to you, the languages in my books are more and more complex with every thing you teach us. I love your channel!

[@Imagino1234]

Is it possible that the direction of time might coincide with the directions for reading and writing within societies where written language exist? I find it fascinating how in Mandarin, time is spoken of vertically, and written language was traditionally vertical in China and Japan.

[@avivastudios2311]

oooh... yes. Never crossed my mind

[@clairewilson8144]

Whenever I talk about this channel to people around me, I Always talk about hopi time and this video. 10/10 one of my favourite videos

[@JCMcGee]

I believe that Vietnamese has the "future behind you" thing going on as well...based on the concept that you can see the past..

[@user-kp5kg5dl8h]

Jimmy McGee so far as I've learned, they seem to think similarly to English. Of course, they've been influenced by outside Latin-based languages in the past.

[@oldbooksatmidnight8118]

the singer rie fu said in a video of one of her performances that she was inspired to write the song "life is like a boat" because of a pastor that said life is like rowing a boat, and you can only see the past as you row forward.

[@HelenaRedgrave]

Isn't Whorf a character in Star Trek TNG?

[@Linlinao]

Lieutenant Worf, without h.

[@bobbobson5595]

YoTambienSoyLinlinao Imagine Worf as a linguist

[@cathyvickers9063]

Redgrave192 Different spelling! Lt Cdr Worf is a character from ST:TNG & ST:DS9. Colonel Worv was a Klingon lawyer in a Trek movie.

[@olleicua]

This was fascinating and illuminating. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is possible the thing about linguistics that interests me the most.

[@ptptpt123]

That outro music. Would love to hear that in a completely other piece, as music alone. Great stuff.

[@NativLang]

Wow, thank you!

[@mariogalileo]

I'm glad to hear that there were as many intrigued people as I was. Personally, I really wish some examples had been given so that I could have a clearer picture of what was being described. Excellent work!

[@monotonehell]

Missed opportunity! In your outro you could have said, "...back in the future." ;)

[@noizee05]

Same thing happened to me while learning Mandarin. As a Spanish speaker, past is behind and the future is in front but in Mandarin, past is in front and future is behind. It was really tricky when we had to form phrases like "2 hours ago" "Next 4 weeks". Interesting video!

[@widmawod]

Could you put the MAJOR MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING on your shirts?

[@NotJustMadeleine]

I discovered this through the film Arrival; it's so interesting to look a little deeper into it! Thank you

[@LordEvrey]

Am I the only one finding it suspicious, how the arrows of time match the corresponding English or Mandarin writing direction? I.e. what's past are the letters I just wrote.

[@xoreign]

Evrey Traditional japanese goes up to down and right to left.

[@FaoladhTV]

Evrey That hypothesis implies a testable prediction - what direction is the arrow of time in languages that write from right to left like Arabic or Hebrew?

[@LordEvrey]

I don't know, never learned Arabic or Hebrew. But it could be interesting to find out how many languages have the arrow of time follow their writing direction. I do not expect that to be anything near even just 2/3, though.

[@MordredMS]

Yes, I noticed too. A commenter up here, Hoopoe of Hope, native Arabic speaker, confirms this: he says that he views the past as being on the left and the future as being on the left. It may be something worth looking into, if it is at all common among a significative majority of languages. +Xoreign mentions Japanese, which would seem to be an exception to this hypothesis, but I beg to differ. Mae: before/in front of Ato: after/behind This seems to point to a horizontal arrow of time, compared to a traditional writing which is top-down. However, let's not forget that the Japanese writing system is not entirely native, that is, it was mostly imported from Chinese, a different language. So in case of incongruences, we should also look at whether or not the writing system is native of that language or has been imported or derived from another.

[@marcomartins3563]

@@FaoladhTV another commentator said that he's a native Arab speaker and they make timelines right to left.

[@mattkuhn6634]

Aww yiss, NativLang tangles with Sapir-Whorf, let's do this!

[@mermanhellville]

Will there ever be a video on how Yucatec deals with time, then? ngl that piqued my interest.

[@katiemonette6571]

ASL is a good example of how we "traditionally" imagine time, there's a lot involved in the tenses! Would looove to see a video about signed languages/modalities :)

[@guymika516]

make a video about Basque!

[@hentehoo27]

Guy Mika I second this! a video about the Uralic languages would be nice to service as well.

[@mlovecraftr]

LangFocus made a video about it

[@patrickhodson8715]

mlovecraftr Langfocus ≠ NativLang

[@klyanadkmorr]

Learning about Languages is good from good teachers. Listen to BOTH! I subscribe to both these guys. stfu.

[@ustwoalberts]

and Welsh, and the 2 Albanian languages

[@DysnomiaATX]

The idea of a tenseless language is intriguing, I hadn't considered it before because I honestly can't think of how it would work. I'd love to see a video on it! Thanks

[@ichtiarurrahman4138]

In Indonesian, the phrase "the old days" refers to the future and not the past

[@2bsirius]

I love your videos! Color categories within language groups are a fascinating topic for linguistic relativists too. It's referred to as *linguistic relativity and the color naming* Berlin and Kay began the research in the late 1960s and it's gone round- and-round within academia ever sense. This stuff is so much fun!

[@charliecastillo2011]

This weird perception of time, or lack thereof, reminds me of a documentary about this indigenous tribe in Brazil, who call themselves the Pirahã. They also have no words for numbers.

[@Elsenoromniano]

Take the Piraha stuff with a grain of salt, it's highly, highly disputed, mostly becasue there was only one source Everett, and one others very few linguists started studying the language, they came to different conclusions.

[@MicroBlogganism]

I wouldn't mind that follow up video. Sounds fascinating!

[@nadem7079]

If we see “earlier” as “left”, it’s at least partly because we write from left to right. Keep in mind Chinese is traditionally written vertically.

[@jamesdriscoll9405]

So what do people think when their language is written right to left then left to right on the next line?

[@nadem7079]

James Driscoll That’s an interesting question. I could imagine that it might lead to a more “flexible” visualisation of the future appearing either to the right or the left, but you’d have to actually study time-related expressions and metaphors in the ancient languages which used this system to see whether there’s any correlation. Of course there are also other factors in the way we see time, like the direction the sun moves.

[@jayasuryangoral-maanyan3901]

@@jamesdriscoll9405 I'm pretty sure there's an initial direction which was left to right in the example that I know so possibly it would stay the same.

[@nsbc657]

This is such a good video and really explain how time is perceived in other languages! As a Mexican, Mayan has also intrigued me because of this lack of tenses, and that pursued me to learn many more languages. For example, Arabic is a language I truly love and my favourite aspect of it is the lack of a present tense for the verb "to be"! But I digress, great video and I hope you dive into other those tenseless languages!

[@victorrand8811]

early 》sun rising later 》sun setting

[@HamletsUnderstudy]

But what do you say at night?

[@victorrand8811]

Giovanni Lido probably those phrases but references to the moon and stars. but im no psycholinguist or an expert on han.

[@weirdofromhalo]

If you're talking about Chinese, at night is 晚上, literally "on the night," which also works for "in the evening." You could also use 夜里 or 夜间 (literally night place, night among) earlier/early and later in Chinese you can use 早点 (morning dot) or 晚点(evening dot), respectively. Do keep in mind that Chinese characters have a lot of different possible translations given the situation and context.

[@Hoehlenmaensch]

Always making me happy to see a Video from you beeing uploaded

[@Interislander957]

My Maori ancestors believed you walked backwards into the future with your past spread out before you.

[@darvisprime]

You are a hero, keep up the excellent work!

[@dyhrbergdk9541]

Like in the movie Arrival.

[@ckatm397]

Much, much more exaggerated version of the theory but ya. Most linguists discredit the idea that languages literally effect thinking in a major sense. They're more interested in the correlation between language and thinking.

[@trevor9241]

A book this reminded me a lot of is The Metaphors We Live by... The main topic of the book is about the ways that the English language and our orientational & ontological orientations shape the way we speak, think, and act.

[@施宇洋-m4c]

Wait, Aymara see the past in front of them and future behind, SO AS WE CHINESE DO! Example: 「我三小時前吃過飯」(I had meal 3 hours ago), literally "I - three hour - FRONT - eat - (done) - meal"(Mandarin don't have both plurals and tenses).

[@sofi0212]

You partly answered a question I had in my mind for a while. Thank you

[@victorrand8811]

the aymara are somewhat backwards eh?

[@matejlieskovsky9625]

Indeed they are! I bet to them we appear to be miles ahead!

[@josievidal8464]

This was awesome!! I'd love to learn more about tenseless languages

[@googolplexbyte]

The Aymara is same as English. Before: What has occurred means what's in front of you. After: What will occur next is behind you. Like standing in line.

[@PC_Simo]

@googleplexbyte That’s, what I thought about the origins of those parallels; and the British should definitely have their fair share of experience of standing in lines.

[@LadyGlobeTrotter23]

Very interesting! Thank you for the work you put into this and your videos

[@LOUDMOUTHTYRONE]

Can you talk about made up languages?

[@IsaacMayerCreativeWorks]

LOUDMOUTHTYRONE Conlangs?

[@MegaPickleguy]

do you-o speak-o el spanglish-o?

[@Mtr_Mnd]

NativLang, if you do make a video like this, I have made my own conlang you can use.

[@kasane1337]

+M45t3r_M1nd Me too, but everyone wants their conlang to appear somewhere, so he would just use the really well-known ones obviously.

[@areez22]

Esperanto!

[@TheSubtleCow]

I love the idea that the future is to ones back. I have always felt that "moving toward the future" was like walking backwards because you can't really see where you are going. Whereas we can always see where we've been. It's a very elegant metaphor.

[@luispeixoto7296]

Hey, Brazilian guy here... So, yeah, just wanted to say that even though I'm a civil engineer I do enjoy my share of linguistics, and your channel is one of my favorites in that aspect. Kudos for the good work. One thing that I always thought but haven't found the concrete answer for is: Why are Portuguese and Spanish so different, although they were quite the same language (Galego) a while back? and why people outside of the lusophones and hispanophones countries mistake them so much? their prosody is so different...

[@cbrtdgh4210]

He has a new video on language evolution which I'm about to watch. My personal take is that historically, languages very quickly separate into dialects in separate locations due to geographical isolation, political/economic autonomy and other factors. That's why in countries with the oldest civilisations like Italy, India and China you have a dizzying array of dialects that can differ from each other far more than Spanish and Portuguese even between geographically close towns. The longer the separation, the bigger the divergence. It's only natural that Portuguese and Spanish should have diverged from each other. As an English speaker, it seems to me that phonologically, the European variants of Spanish and Portuguese have diverged from each other even more than the American variants which perhaps preserved some of their archaic sounds. This trend has obviously been reversing in modern times.

[@sophypancake279]

I only speak a little Spanish and no Portuguese, so I'm not exactly qualified to judge the situation, but I was under the impression that Spanish and Portuguese sound a little different (Portuguese is mumblier and has softer, "mushier" sounds), but have really similar Grammar and that their words are still similar...?

[@jeanalisson]

that's exactly it. I think the most striking difference is that Portuguese, like French, differentiates between open, closed and nasal vowels, while Spanish doesn't. But we do understand each other fairly well.

[@GoodMedicine]

Hope I manage to explain clear enough, and so: Agreed! It is all relative in the ears of the listener I guess; But.. Irish and Swedish !?! Curious as to how you got to that pairing.. Irish speaker here, so might I suggest northern Irish (Gaeilge Uladh ) as sounding similar to ScotsGaeilge (Scottish Gaelic), but to us in these isles, it seems Swedish is similar to Norwegian more like (..I think..??) Totally agree on what you say about how things totally don't sound similar (eg, Chinese/Korean), once your ear knows the difference. Just adding my two cents in, to support that perspective by saying about how the *listener* determines what they believe they hear. Another example: In the years that I was speaking a lot of Gaeilge Uladh, my boyfriend also happened to come from that part of the country (Northern Ireland). I couldn't help noticing that when on the phone, when speaking in English, 97% of callers iif they didn't know me especially, would try to place which part of Ireland I was from (or where my accent was from). Out of those, 15% insisted I was from "the north" somewhere; it was really interesting to hear where other Irish folks felt I had to be from, based on the way I spoke English (if I spoke Irish it would be a dead giveaway). Out of those who did not jump on that bandwagon however, 3%, Breakdown as follows: 1% had no sense of tonal processing/orientation, and didn't register any noticeable inflection from any region at all. 1% was born outside of Ireland and lived there long enough that their aural orientation was not tuned to the local intonation anymore.. 1% had spent a lot of time abroad and thus heard the other contributing influences to the way I spoke English by then! eg, We both lived on Turtle island in the past, and she insisted that she couldn't hear any Irish inflection in my speaking at all at all at all. Which was notable ONLY as compared with 97% of people insisting I was Irish-born and bred (I'm not) 🙂

[@arnurdthisenbjorn2240]

Luis Peixoto From my understanding, Galicia was the only kingdom of Spain nor to be conquered by the moors. So, Gallego was the court language of Spain before the Reconquest of Spain under king Fernando and Queen Isabel. On gaining the throne, King Fernando changed the court language to Castilian which is the official Spanish of Spain. Gallego and Portuguese retain the older forms of Medieval Spanish.

[@enternalinferno]

NativLang makes some quality stuff. Good work as always!

[@falnica]

68th

[@seselis625]

I've always seen Sapir-Whorf as a classic cause-effect reversal; a culture has developed a way to think about a thing, which it reflects in its language, rather than the language determining how they think about it.

[@96Bogg]

Did you just watch Arrival or what ?

[@marieg353]

I remember reading about some of this stuff in I Is an Other by James Geary! My English teacher last year had us read some of that book. That's what got me interested in linguistics and, by extension, this channel.

[@whitherwhence]

Time is not what people thing. People think about time as linear progression of cause and effect, but from a non-linear, non-subjectuve point of view, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, time-wimey... stuff.

Nice Video, you make me remember my good days at the library.

[@chrizzyj.4800]

Thank you so much! Your channel got me interested in linguistics!!!!

[@Painted_Owl]

God, I love this channel. This video always gets my head spinning about creating fictional cultures and story world building. It's awesome!

[@petrjasinski8659]

Great video. I would add that Sapir-Whorf is not only about different perception of time. There are many other language "infused" differences.

[@karmakanic]

Totally fascinating - one of the most enjoyable I've seen of yours, and that's saying something. And yes, you should DEFINITELY do a vid on tenseless time structures! Please keep it up.

[@terryandthepirates]

Very well done. Please continue!

[@SayHelloHelli]

omg i read an article about this last month and it blew my mind

[@brankeane2830]

Huh, fascinating! Thank you! An acknowledgement of what makes languages unique without exoticising them or their speakers is a hard balance to strike, and you do it well! It's interesting, Russian also expresses some tenses and time concepts with aspects. Hadn't considered there might be any similarity between Russian and Hopi, but apparently Russian occasionally visits where Hopi lives xD

[@stantrien8106]

We are made of matter. Our thoughts are changing patterns expressed in matter, nerves firing and hormones moving. Change in matter can only happen with time, a before state and an after state. What we experience as "forward" in time or the future is the fourth dimensional direction in which entropy increases and any change in matter must increase entropy. Therefor, as 3D material beings we MUST experience time and we MUST all experience it in the same direction and rate, assuming you don't start bending space and time, but I'm pretty sure language doesn't do that. Any effect would be in how we express our experience of time, not the actual experience.

[@archibald-yc5le]

Interestingly, in Mandarin they also have 前 qián "front, forward" and 后 hòu "back, backward". If they talk space, hòu means "behind" and qián "in front of". But when talking time, hòu expresses future (后天 "day after tomorrow") and qián - past (前天 "day before yestersay")

[@kekeke8988]

Funny, the character 后 means "empress" in Japanese.

[@keegster7167]

I've seen the hating on Whorf so much for so long; thanks for giving more insight on it.

[@xoreign]

King Keegster Never hate on something without understanding it first.

[@osmanceylan]

love this channel keep it up!

[@pablomiyara7697]

Nice video! i don't know about other accents, but in Rioplatense Spanish: -when asked to do about something, we coloquially reply "ahí voy", which can literally be translated as "there i go" but we mean "i'll do it now", or "ahí está", "there it is", to mean we've done it. -also, some people when referring to a past event refer to it as, for example, "allá por el 2006", like "over there, in 2006", or "allá por julio, "there in July"

[@Pocgamer]

Interesting stuff, also a good way of highlighting the differences in approaches between pure linguists and anthropological linguists.

[@DarkAngelEU]

I was waiting for Aymara, my teacher's really fond of them :)

[@asimqadri2009]

Deep .. food for thought ... since I start learning Chinese,I have been thinking on concept of linguistic relativity .. thanks for the video

[@vvvvaaaacccc]

i would love a follow-up exploring how speakers of tenseless languages talk about time!

[@rebekas.4280]

such a great video. incredible channel.

[@serenatortellini7927]

The podcast Invisibilia discusses this topic at length in their most recent season. One story that jumps out at me at the moment in terms of relevance: The man who learns a new language and experiences an emotion he previously had no concept for. The idea being that concepts shape our reality. What shapes our concepts? Language and nothing else.

[@YuriRadavchuk]

Wonderful episode to watch.

[@Trolligarch]

Holy shit. Until you pointed it out to me, I never realised that we reference time using up/down directions (e.g. 上个星期五, last Friday vs. 下个星期五, next Friday) I just say it in everyday conversation without a second thought. But when you showed the timeline experiment, I think of time on a left to right spectrum, even though Chinese is my mother tongue. I'm thoroughly baffled.