Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Wednesday 23 August 2017

Language and Time.

Guaraní - still spoken by 80% of the population of landlocked and impoverished Paraguay, not many of whom speak Spanish - interprets time differently from Indo-European, Semitic and other settled-people's languages. Time future is permanently in doubt: the word for tomorrow means if the sun rises again. The concept of time past is dual - divided between what happened (or what is alleged to have or accepted as having happened), and what was supposed to happen but did not.  This may, of course, be due to the appalling War of the Triple Alliance...

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1 comment:

Alma Kaselis said...

It's , probably' out of the context however it reminded me the frequentative past tense in Lithuanian.