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since the Hopi language has no past or future tenses or concepts, how can their world be like ours?
isn't it cool to know that language may create and define the limits of reality?
;-)
2 Answers
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
The whole idea that Hopi has no way of handling time-related concepts comes from an oversimplification of the work of Benjamin Whorf ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_language#Metaphy... ).
It has since been solidly disputed, and it appears Hopi handles time concepts in an unfamiliar but equivalent way, using validation (validated vs not-yet-validated) rather than a framework of linear time.
There are some examples here ...
=quote=
English "He is running" -> Hopi "It is fact that (HE, RUN)"
English "He will run" -> Hopi "It is expected that (HE, RUN)"
English "He runs" -> Hopi "It is a continual law that (HE, RUN)"
- What Whorf Really Said http://www.nickyee.com/ponder/whorf.html
=quote=
... and there was a major study by Ekkehart Malotki, "Hopi time: a linguistic analysis of the temporal concepts in the Hopi language" http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XSeGmS4uXykC&dq...
