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Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018)

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Re: Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018)

#41

Post by jaclaz »

zoomablemind wrote: post #39

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…

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).

Re: Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018)

#42

Post by kawera »

jaclaz wrote: post #41
zoomablemind wrote: post #39

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…

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…

Same in Portuguese (amanhã) and French (demain).

Re: Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018)

#43

Post by nemetroid »

alkonaut wrote: post #24
wodenokoto wrote: post #3

> 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 t…

> 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”. Moving it ”back” to the future makes no sense...

"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").

http://www3.sprakochfolkminnen.se/sprakladan/ShowSearch.aspx...

https://www.facebook.com/Spraketip1/posts/10158189290675512/

Re: Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018)

#44

Post by lajawfe »

jaclaz wrote: post #41
zoomablemind wrote: post #39

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…

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…

"Later" in English matches "not now and not so soon" no?

Re: Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018)

#46

Post by godelski »

alpaca128 wrote: post #11
godelski wrote: post #9

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…

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"

This threw me off too so I'm unsure. But it really sounds like much bigger leaps than what is conventionally believed.

Re: Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018)

#47

Post by gnull »

> 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?

Re: Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018)

#48

Post by flatfilefan »

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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