5 ms·

Decades ago when I got a degree in anthropology, we learned about a Native American language that didn't share our concepts of space and time. I don't remember

Decades ago when I got a degree in anthropology, we learned about a Native American language that didn't share our concepts of space and time. I don't remember the details except they used the same tense for future and dreams, and distances were always expressed as travel time. (That might not sound all that significant but there was more to it.) Also they tended not to use nouns. They wouldn't say "lightning flashed," just "flashed." Seems like it was Mojave, not sure.

MaxBarraclough 5y ago
> a Native American language that didn't share our concepts of space and time Is this actually true? From a quick look at Wikipedia, it doesn't seem to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy
- DennisP 5y ago
  My professors were pretty big Whorf fans, in general.
masklinn 5y ago
There are a fair amount of langages which interestingly break western assumptions about langage logic and reasoning. A pretty famous example is Aboriginal Australian langages where directions are always absolute (cardinal), not relative. So in e.g. Guugu Yimithirr you'd tell a guest that the food is in the living room on the southern table, rather than e.g. the table to the left of the entrance, or the table in front of the balcony. In at least some of these langages, time is also cardinal: where most western cultures order timelines left to right, Kuuk Thaayorre speakers do so east to west. IIRC there are also cultures where time goes back to front (because you can see the past so it’s obviously in front of you).
- xenocratus 5y ago
  Link for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuuk_Thaayorre_language#Lexical_semantics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuuk_Thaayorre_language#Lexica...
umvi 5y ago
Seems like that language would be incompatible with a modern society and would only really work for a primitive one. As soon as you can have multiple things that flash or multiple modes of transportation your language would become too ambiguous. That's not to say the native Americans that speak it couldn't evolve the language to accommodate modern society, I'm sure they could.
- katmannthree 5y ago
  Although it's not quite the same, _pro_noun dropping[0] is fairly common in some languages and even happens in English under some circumstances (generally in either very informal or highly technical communications). In contexts where inference is easy there's a certain logic to dropping nonessential fillers. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language
- masklinn 5y ago
  > Seems like that language would be incompatible with a modern society and would only really work for a primitive one. I don’t know, it sounds like the exact opposite to me: I rarely care about the distance itself, and disambiguating would be as simple as pairing travel time and travel mode. That is already a pretty normal thing to do e.g. “the grocery store is 5mn away”, possibly with the addendum that it’s on foot / by car / by bike if’s not obvious from context.
  - fpig 5y ago
    > I don’t know, it sounds like the exact opposite to me That's a ridiculous statement. When you tell someone the grocery store is 5 mn away, you're expressing time, not distance, because you think they're interested in the time, not distance. Yet you don't convert meters to minutes when you're telling someone how high they should build a wall. And you don't say "drill a hole 1/2000000 minutes by car wide". That's the point of having a well-organized system of units, you can clearly express whatever you need to, always using the same system, and anyone who knows the system will understand it regardless of context. Not being able to express distance as a separate concept is clearly inferior, since in our system we can express time, like in your example, but we can also express distance precisely when needed.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
> distances were always expressed in terms of travel time That is also true for large English-speaking portions of the US.
- curiousllama 5y ago
  Facts - I honestly dont know how far apart cities on the US East Coast are, but I know exactly how long it would take to drive between them. I’d have to work backwards to figure out distance.
- anthk 5y ago
  In Spain too. How long is X from there? About 10 minutes by car.
Jenk 5y ago
One of my former employers participated in a goodwill project to help Maasai tribes in Kenya build infrastructure like schools and wells. The Maasai have/had little concept of travel or time. One of their tribesmen came to visit us in the UK and he told of how difficult it was to explain to his village that he had to be at the airport by a certain time. He had to use childbirth as a metaphor - as in told his villagers that he had to be there in time for the airplane to be born into the sky. Their usual perception of time is just one of "when it happens" (like "cest la vie" but explicitly time) When do we eat? When we're hungry. When do we tend to the goats? When the goats need tending. Etc.
VoodooJuJu 5y ago
>distances were always expressed as travel time I'd like to see more of this kind measurement expression in our modern vernaculars. For example, an acre could be defined as 43560 sq ft, or 4047 meters, or .405 hectares, but these are arbitrary and don't tell me much. A more useful definition of acre is "the amount of land that a pair of oxen can plow in a day". Then, as a farmer, I don't really care how many square feet or square cubits or square whatever it is. I have a domain-specific (farming) definition that actually communicates something more useful to me than arbitrary distance units.
- fpig 5y ago
  How is such a definition more useful? It's certainly not more useful to me. If someone tried to sell me such a quantity of land, the first thing I'd ask would be what the actual size is in standard units. A universal, precisely defined system of units is superior because it works in any context, you just need to know the system. Expressing distance by travel time is a similarly stupid concept. I can tell someone something is 15 minutes by car, but here I'm expressing time, not distance. If I tell someone something is 15 meters away I'm expressing distance. The separate concepts of time and distance allow me to precisely express whatever I need to.
  - Kalium 5y ago
    It's a tool that can be very helpful for describing the logistics of travel. Depending on where you are and the context of the conversation, knowing that something is fifteen miles away might tell you shockingly little about the experience of getting there. There are places where that distance in one direction might take hours, but in another direction minutes. As you might imagine, this can be important to know.
bradrn 5y ago
> we learned about a Native American language that didn't share our concepts of space and time. This is almost certainly Hopi, which has been somewhat controversial ever since Whorf made a bunch of astounding claims about its expression of time. There’s a whole Wikipedia page about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy [EDIT: Whoops, didn’t realise MaxBarraclough already mentioned this, sorry…]

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

> a Native American language that didn't share our concepts of space and time Is this actually true? From a quick look at Wikipedia, it doesn't seem to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy

DennisP 5y ago
My professors were pretty big Whorf fans, in general.

masklinn 5y ago

There are a fair amount of langages which interestingly break western assumptions about langage logic and reasoning. A pretty famous example is Aboriginal Australian langages where directions are always absolute (cardinal), not relative. So in e.g. Guugu Yimithirr you'd tell a guest that the food is in the living room on the southern table, rather than e.g. the table to the left of the entrance, or the table in front of the balcony. In at least some of these langages, time is also cardinal: where most western cultures order timelines left to right, Kuuk Thaayorre speakers do so east to west. IIRC there are also cultures where time goes back to front (because you can see the past so it’s obviously in front of you).

xenocratus 5y ago
Link for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuuk_Thaayorre_language#Lexical_semantics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuuk_Thaayorre_language#Lexica...

umvi 5y ago

Seems like that language would be incompatible with a modern society and would only really work for a primitive one. As soon as you can have multiple things that flash or multiple modes of transportation your language would become too ambiguous. That's not to say the native Americans that speak it couldn't evolve the language to accommodate modern society, I'm sure they could.

katmannthree 5y ago
Although it's not quite the same, _pro_noun dropping[0] is fairly common in some languages and even happens in English under some circumstances (generally in either very informal or highly technical communications). In contexts where inference is easy there's a certain logic to dropping nonessential fillers. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language
masklinn 5y ago
> Seems like that language would be incompatible with a modern society and would only really work for a primitive one. I don’t know, it sounds like the exact opposite to me: I rarely care about the distance itself, and disambiguating would be as simple as pairing travel time and travel mode. That is already a pretty normal thing to do e.g. “the grocery store is 5mn away”, possibly with the addendum that it’s on foot / by car / by bike if’s not obvious from context.
- fpig 5y ago
  > I don’t know, it sounds like the exact opposite to me That's a ridiculous statement. When you tell someone the grocery store is 5 mn away, you're expressing time, not distance, because you think they're interested in the time, not distance. Yet you don't convert meters to minutes when you're telling someone how high they should build a wall. And you don't say "drill a hole 1/2000000 minutes by car wide". That's the point of having a well-organized system of units, you can clearly express whatever you need to, always using the same system, and anyone who knows the system will understand it regardless of context. Not being able to express distance as a separate concept is clearly inferior, since in our system we can express time, like in your example, but we can also express distance precisely when needed.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

> distances were always expressed in terms of travel time That is also true for large English-speaking portions of the US.

curiousllama 5y ago
Facts - I honestly dont know how far apart cities on the US East Coast are, but I know exactly how long it would take to drive between them. I’d have to work backwards to figure out distance.
anthk 5y ago
In Spain too. How long is X from there? About 10 minutes by car.

Jenk 5y ago

One of my former employers participated in a goodwill project to help Maasai tribes in Kenya build infrastructure like schools and wells. The Maasai have/had little concept of travel or time. One of their tribesmen came to visit us in the UK and he told of how difficult it was to explain to his village that he had to be at the airport by a certain time. He had to use childbirth as a metaphor - as in told his villagers that he had to be there in time for the airplane to be born into the sky. Their usual perception of time is just one of "when it happens" (like "cest la vie" but explicitly time) When do we eat? When we're hungry. When do we tend to the goats? When the goats need tending. Etc.

VoodooJuJu 5y ago

>distances were always expressed as travel time I'd like to see more of this kind measurement expression in our modern vernaculars. For example, an acre could be defined as 43560 sq ft, or 4047 meters, or .405 hectares, but these are arbitrary and don't tell me much. A more useful definition of acre is "the amount of land that a pair of oxen can plow in a day". Then, as a farmer, I don't really care how many square feet or square cubits or square whatever it is. I have a domain-specific (farming) definition that actually communicates something more useful to me than arbitrary distance units.

fpig 5y ago
How is such a definition more useful? It's certainly not more useful to me. If someone tried to sell me such a quantity of land, the first thing I'd ask would be what the actual size is in standard units. A universal, precisely defined system of units is superior because it works in any context, you just need to know the system. Expressing distance by travel time is a similarly stupid concept. I can tell someone something is 15 minutes by car, but here I'm expressing time, not distance. If I tell someone something is 15 meters away I'm expressing distance. The separate concepts of time and distance allow me to precisely express whatever I need to.
- Kalium 5y ago
  It's a tool that can be very helpful for describing the logistics of travel. Depending on where you are and the context of the conversation, knowing that something is fifteen miles away might tell you shockingly little about the experience of getting there. There are places where that distance in one direction might take hours, but in another direction minutes. As you might imagine, this can be important to know.

bradrn 5y ago

> we learned about a Native American language that didn't share our concepts of space and time. This is almost certainly Hopi, which has been somewhat controversial ever since Whorf made a bunch of astounding claims about its expression of time. There’s a whole Wikipedia page about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy [EDIT: Whoops, didn’t realise MaxBarraclough already mentioned this, sorry…]