
Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018) - lelf
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/being-multilingual-alters-your-experience-of-time
======
wodenokoto
> 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.

~~~
whatshisface
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.

~~~
ummm32
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".

~~~
kgwgk
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.

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yorwba
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.)

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zoomablemind
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.

~~~
jaclaz
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).

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

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tempguy9999
> 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.

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etangent
Willing to bet that none of these experiments will replicate if conducted on a
larger sample.

~~~
tempguy9999
I've not downvoted you but I really don't see this comment adding anything to
the discussion, unless you wish to clarify.

------
jddj
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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Interesting.

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?".

~~~
zimpenfish
> In particular hobbies (leisure activities) are known as passtimes.

Minor nit - it's "pastime" (although it does come from "passe tyme" and
"passe-temps")

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I was poorly trying to highlight the etymology, probably: "pass-times"
(pastimes).

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trilila
I am multilingual and i can confirm this is not accurate.

~~~
loopbit
I'm also multilingual and can confirm that at least some aspects of the
languages mentioned that I know, are accurate.

For a few years I was also a language teacher and this article explains one of
the things students have problems understanding.

~~~
trilila
Indeed, but it’s not because they “experience time” differently, it’s because
they express time differently.

~~~
Kapura
Is it possible to know how another person experiences time? Or anything, for
that matter?

~~~
tempguy9999
By inference, I'd say yes.

I think that's what the entire article is about. Like, the whole point of it.

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nickserv
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.

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theemathas
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.)

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notus
What is meant by "rewiring the brain"? It always seemed like a squishy term
that doesn't really mean anything.

~~~
visarga
Not much because any experience is 'rewiring the brain'.

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godelski
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.)

~~~
alpaca128
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"

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

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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?

------
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.

------
awestroke
There's a great podcast about this:
[https://timelyapp.com/abouttime/episode-1-the-language-of-
ti...](https://timelyapp.com/abouttime/episode-1-the-language-of-time)

