Speakers of different languages and cultures perceive time differently. In the West, it flows in a straight line, but for an Eastern person, a spiral is a more suitable model. What else does the language we speak say about us?
“I was surprised when I found out that in Russian you can’t say “I am Alain” or “I have a hunger”, and I still don’t understand why you can say “I have a thirst” and at the same time you cannot say “I have a hunger” , but you need to say “I’m hungry,” admits 23-year-old Alain, a student from Senegal. — But nothing. In any language there are oddities that you need to get used to, and then they will seem completely natural. In Russian, the present tense lacks the verb copula familiar to many other languages - it appears only in the past and future, for example: «I’m at home», but «I was (will be) at home.»
Does it affect our consciousness and behavior?
“We do not miss this “is” for nothing. We in Russia are definitely missing something in relation to the current moment,” complains 27-year-old Katerina, a landscape designer. We don’t feel its value. For example, I am always punctual. And I notice that I’m in the minority. My customers and even suppliers find it perfectly natural to arrive an hour late. Or not appear at all! Of course, I try not to deal with such people anymore, but this happens too often.
Economy is a property of any language, it removes what is “already understandable”
Is it really grammar? The writer Efim Bershin draws a different conclusion from the same premise (the absence of a link): “We once also said “I am”, but now this is not necessary: we have established ourselves and feel calm and stable in the present. And other nations need to assert their presence.”
Olga Saranina, a teacher of Russian as a foreign language and Romance languages, is convinced that it is not about psychology, but about the properties of the language as such: “Economy is a property of any language, it removes what is “already understandable.” We omit the linking verb, and the Spaniards the pronoun: «trabajo» — «I work», but without the «I», because the form of the verb indicates the first person. By the way, in colloquial Russian this is also possible: “What are you doing? — Working!» Does this mean that someone is not aware of his «I»? Of course no!»
Rotation and return
The debate about the extent to which language influences – and does influence – thinking has been around for a long time. Already the ancient Greek philosopher Plato argued with the sophists, who believed that language is the only way to know the world: he also argued that language only reflects eternal ideas that exist independently of it. In the XNUMXth century, Benjamin Whorf, an American amateur linguist and specialist in Indian languages, spoke again in favor of the dependence of thinking on language. This hypothesis still has both supporters and opponents.
Nevertheless, some correspondences can be traced: for example, one study confirms that English speakers consider time to be rather duration and talk about its length, while Greek and Spanish speakers rather think of it as a quantity and say not “short time”, but “ little time.» At the same time, when native speakers of one language were taught another language, the system of their ideas also changed.
Also, speakers of different languages think differently about the deployment of time in space. For English-speakers, time moves horizontally, says psychologist and linguist Lera Boroditsky, while for Chinese speakers, time moves vertically.
In some part of our unconscious, we perceive time as an endless and renewable resource.
But not everyone believes that time moves in a straight line. In archaic agrarian cultures, time is cyclical, it goes round by round. Everything repeats itself, and there is nowhere to rush.
But what about Russian time? We can remember that the word «time» was once written as «time» — with «yus small» at the end, which denoted a nasal sound, and was pronounced approximately like «times», and etymologically it goes back to the ancient root «vertmen», as well as «twirl «.
“The original meaning of noun. time — «return, alternation of day and night,» indicates the etymological dictionary. Perhaps in some part of our unconscious we perceive time as an endless and renewable resource. But does this mean that using this resource gives us pleasure?
Money or communication?
It is hardly possible to enjoy time in its purest form — the question is what we fill it with. And here the priorities depend not so much on the language as on the culture. For example, the saying “time is money” describes the lifestyle in the United States quite accurately.
“Counting life by minutes and seconds is especially evident in America, where the pedantic punctuality of overbusy business people has long led them to the conclusion that time and money are much more important than friendships and kinship. Such was and remains the spirit of American business, setting the tone for the whole society,” writes Lynn Wisson, an American of Russian origin, a researcher of cultural differences between the United States and Russia.
But in another developed country — Austria — time is treated differently. “To date, I have lived in Vienna for two years and noticed that the locals are very immersed in the present and know how to enjoy it,” Tatyana Potemkina, a systemic family therapist, shares her observations. — There are many different holidays in the country, on the eve of each they arrange picturesque small fairs.
The residents who come to them are busy not so much shopping as talking to each other. Any event is used as an occasion for communication. In the apple season, friends get together and go to harvest, and in the fall they invite each other to pumpkin soup. How to explain this difference? Possibly tax law.
“Austria has a progressive tax: the higher the income, the higher the deductions, so here no one seeks to earn more than they need to live,” notes Tatyana Potemkina. “But I think it’s also because they take their time: everyone feels like a particle of a continuous flow in time. The Austrians maintain and observe their traditions, not formally, but sincerely. In peasant families, the eldest son still inherits the household.
And this stable way of life gives a feeling of belonging to a long line of generations, to something bigger than yourself. And in Russia, even in one XNUMXth century, traditions broke down several times, in the history of almost any family there are a lot of broken emotional ties, a lot of abrupt changes. Therefore, we do not have a sense of the flow of time, on the contrary, there is an anxiety that it may be interrupted. This anxiety can be mobilizing: we are ready to learn and adapt, but there are also negative aspects to it: we have less trust in the world, more pessimism and catastrophic expectations.
What are we to do with all this? We cannot change where we were born and what language we spoke. But it is in our power to study and take into account cultural and linguistic differences, to try and create new behaviors if the old ones do not suit us. “Learn languages,” adds teacher Olga Saranina. “Each new language opens up an opportunity for us to see the world and ourselves in a new way.”