In an earlier post, Long Time No See, we looked at how the English and Chinese conceptions of time are very similar.

From the observer’s point of view:

• The future 未来 (wèilái) is in front of us.

• The past 过去 (guòqù) is behind us.

The observer might be moving toward the future, or time and events might be moving toward the observer. The key here is that there is movement relative to the observer, from in front to behind.

But also, we project a front and a back onto time, or blocks of time.

• Earlier events are before 以前 (yǐqián) later events.

• Later events are after 以后 (yǐhòu) earlier events.

It seems that this is irrespective of the position of the observer. Events are positioned with respect to other events.

Each of these ideas is true for both English speakers and Chinese speakers.

But there’s one more element to everyday discussion of time, and it appears, at first glance, that English and Chinese speakers approach it in quite different ways. Continue…

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have written at some length about metaphor and it’s role in language and the mind. The following quote is from their 1999 work, Philosophy in the Flesh (p139).

“Time is as basic a concept as we have. Yet time, in English, and in other languages is, for the most part, not conceptualised and talked about on its own terms. Very little of our understanding of time is purely temporal. Most of our understanding of time is a metaphorical version of understanding of motion in space.”

Note, “in other languages”. They don’t say, in all languages. But a theme of Lakoff and Johnson’s work is that, they claim, we think the way we think because of the way our bodies are. Continue…

Read down to verify that the use of shit is quotative (if gratuitous) here, sorry for the pattern.

The political and personal ramifications of Han Han’s recent post on his famous blog cannot be entirely negligible when it includes quotes like this (translation from C. Custer on Chinasmack)…

I feel we should permit the Fifty Cent Party to exist; everyone has the right to hire someone else to speak for them and those hired have the right to speak anywhere they please. If you can beat Xiao Ming once, and then with the money stolen off of him hire someone to curse him once, that counts as a talent. Every government has a mechanism for propagating their perspective, [so] that is excusable.

Add this to the intro he gave recently to a speech at Xiamen University: Continue…