4 ms·

I am confused by what the article says. At least in Spain we don't use volumetric relative measures for time (big/small) but linear ("corto"/"largo", short/lon

I am confused by what the article says. At least in Spain we don't use volumetric relative measures for time (big/small) but linear ("corto"/"largo", short/long). This is particularly true when for the examples in the article ("duración" duration: "larga duración" o "corta duración"; "wedding", a "big wedding" is a wedding with a lot of people, a "long wedding" is a wedding that takes a lot of time). The only case that might be different is that in Spanish it is common to use "mucho/poco" (a lot, little) as an adverb with "durar" ("to last") as in "sth lasts a lot" as opposed "sth lasts long" or "cuanto dura?" ("how much it lasts/takes?") As other pointed out, the "now" that blends into the future is maybe a more interesting feature of how time is understood in Spanish vs other languages.

omaranto 9y ago
I'm Mexican and everything you said about Spanish Spanish seems to me to also hold for Mexican Spanish. I wouldn't be surprised if someone Swedes showed up now saying the article is also wrong about Swedish. :)
memracom 9y ago
It is probably something to do with cultural habits in different geographic areas, not necessarily language. I moved from an English speaking region (Ontario, Canada) to another English speaking region (British Columbia, Canada) 5,000 km away. In BC people seem to measure distance using time but in Ontario they use distance. In Ontario they will say that a town is 150 km away but in BC they say that a town is 45 minutes away. Possibly this has to do with the mountainous terrain of BC which restricts your travel routes and speed, while Ontario is relatively flat, allows many different routes between point A and B, and you can speed without dying. On the other hand, I also speak Russian, and switch between Russian and English several times per day. When I speak/think in Russian I tend to not worry about the time order of things that I speak about because Russian has few verb tenses and makes it easy to function in an eternal now where actions are either ongoing or completed. Good for getting an overall perspective on things.
- jurie 9y ago
  Albertan here; we're flat and our roads are straight, but we also measure distances by travel time, whether in the city ("I live 20 minutes from the mall") or across the province ("Calgary is three hours from Edmonton"). I suspect that it's a western thing more than a terrain thing. I wonder if that applies to the western USA as well? Another interesting thing that I've noticed is that Europeans and North Americans have a very different concept of historical time and relative distance. To me, a building that has stood for 100 years is OLD, and 200km (Somewhere that's "about an hour and a half to two hours away") is a day trip that's nothing out of the ordinary. When I was in the UK, I noticed that people held the opposite view - 100 years ago was just yesterday, relatively speaking, while traveling 200km for a day trip was inconceivable.
  - data_hope 9y ago
    as a european, in canada and the US I was constantly confused by directions. america uses street names and cardinal directions (turn north on I-??? then west on ...). europeans think in terms of sequences of towns (to get to munich I must drive on the autobahn via Stuttgart, Ulm, Augsburg). I once travelled from toronto to chicago by car and decided to write down my own directions from google maps because I felt the ones provided were useless. Boy, was I lost when I didnt see a roadsign for windsor/detroit.
    - woogiewonka 9y ago
      That's funny.
    - sinxoveretothex 9y ago
      Here's a thought: the reason for the difference is due to how New World cities were artificially made rectangular whereas the Old World cities have a concentric circles growing out feel to them. Go on Google Maps and look at a city like Montreal and you'll see that the streets are very rectangular. Look at a city like Paris and you'll see a spiderweb instead of rectangles.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago

omaranto 9y ago

I'm Mexican and everything you said about Spanish Spanish seems to me to also hold for Mexican Spanish. I wouldn't be surprised if someone Swedes showed up now saying the article is also wrong about Swedish. :)

memracom 9y ago

It is probably something to do with cultural habits in different geographic areas, not necessarily language. I moved from an English speaking region (Ontario, Canada) to another English speaking region (British Columbia, Canada) 5,000 km away. In BC people seem to measure distance using time but in Ontario they use distance. In Ontario they will say that a town is 150 km away but in BC they say that a town is 45 minutes away. Possibly this has to do with the mountainous terrain of BC which restricts your travel routes and speed, while Ontario is relatively flat, allows many different routes between point A and B, and you can speed without dying. On the other hand, I also speak Russian, and switch between Russian and English several times per day. When I speak/think in Russian I tend to not worry about the time order of things that I speak about because Russian has few verb tenses and makes it easy to function in an eternal now where actions are either ongoing or completed. Good for getting an overall perspective on things.

jurie 9y ago
Albertan here; we're flat and our roads are straight, but we also measure distances by travel time, whether in the city ("I live 20 minutes from the mall") or across the province ("Calgary is three hours from Edmonton"). I suspect that it's a western thing more than a terrain thing. I wonder if that applies to the western USA as well? Another interesting thing that I've noticed is that Europeans and North Americans have a very different concept of historical time and relative distance. To me, a building that has stood for 100 years is OLD, and 200km (Somewhere that's "about an hour and a half to two hours away") is a day trip that's nothing out of the ordinary. When I was in the UK, I noticed that people held the opposite view - 100 years ago was just yesterday, relatively speaking, while traveling 200km for a day trip was inconceivable.
- data_hope 9y ago
  as a european, in canada and the US I was constantly confused by directions. america uses street names and cardinal directions (turn north on I-??? then west on ...). europeans think in terms of sequences of towns (to get to munich I must drive on the autobahn via Stuttgart, Ulm, Augsburg). I once travelled from toronto to chicago by car and decided to write down my own directions from google maps because I felt the ones provided were useless. Boy, was I lost when I didnt see a roadsign for windsor/detroit.
  - woogiewonka 9y ago
    That's funny.
  - sinxoveretothex 9y ago
    Here's a thought: the reason for the difference is due to how New World cities were artificially made rectangular whereas the Old World cities have a concentric circles growing out feel to them. Go on Google Maps and look at a city like Montreal and you'll see that the streets are very rectangular. Look at a city like Paris and you'll see a spiderweb instead of rectangles.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago