A different take on past and present

[Guest guest]

"Different languages highlight the varieties of human experience, revealing as mutable aspects of life that we tend to think of as settled and universal, such as our experience of time, number, or color. In Tuva, for example, the past is always spoken of as ahead of one, and the future is behind one's back. 'We could never say, I'm looking forward to doing something,' a Tuvan told me. Indeed, he might say, 'I'm looking forward to the day before yesterday.' It makes total sense if you think of it in a Tuvan sort of way: If the future were ahead of you, wouldn't it be in plain view?"

-The Endangered Languages Project

Along those lines, there is some culture (I forget which one) that uses the same word for the colors blue and green. It's amazing how much culture shapes us! I can't imagine not having a word to differentiate green eyes from blue eyes, for example.

Helena