See you again yesterday
01/14/2009 at 14:14 from (47.683479, -122.266725)
Because of the intermittent wifi availability here in the court house (I'm on jury duty today), I haven't been able to work much. Instead, I've been reading up on destinations for our trip and the people that we'll be visiting. As I began digging into an introduction to the Quechua language, I ran across a piece of information so startlingly cool that I had to get it down in writing.
Before I go any further, though, a little background:
When Marijana and I first met, she spoke little English and I couldn't even properly pronounce the word "Croatian", let alone Croatian words. As she picked up the language and I a little of hers, we noted how bizarre idioms and common language constructs really are. With words as our lens, we began to see just how broadly intertwined a society's language is with its culture.
Marijana was the first (and only) person who has ever pointed out to me how strange it is that we use a typically positional word ("on") to refer to a point in time ("Let's meet on Thursday"). But not just any unit of time. We only seem to use it for days. You'll certainly never hear a native speaker say they want to take the train to Patagonia "on 2009" or get to their appointment "on 10:00", but one thing you can be assured of is that they will want to get there "on time".
And, she went on, there are plenty of phrases where the word "on" only serves to confuse the expression. The classic example is the phrase "you're on", to signify agreement to terms. It is, let's face it, a mere sentence fragment to a non-native speaker. Without context, it makes for powerfully frustrating conversations.
As we learned more about each other's cultures, we found that these sorts of meaningless idioms permeate both of our languages. When Marijana took note of the "on" example, though, I was forced to recall how loudly I had mocked the Spanish language in high school for its seemingly inconsistent and illogical use of the words "en", "por", and "para". No language worth learning, I had thought, could be so arbitrary in structure.
Wrong.
The rules pertaining to language are often complex and arbitrary because they are ultimately the products of a complex and arbitrary species. The structure and vocabulary of a language are the tools with which a culture expresses itself, and so those tools are more a reflection of the culture than logical operators. In fact, entire constructions are built around shared perceptions of common concepts.
And this is where Quechua comes in.
As I read through some dry description of how to form adverbs, I hit this little gem:
There are several original adverbs. For Europeans, it is striking that the adverb qhipa means both "behind" and "future", whereas ñawpa means "ahead, in front" and "past". This means that local and temporal concepts of adverbs in Quechua (as well as in Aymara) are associated to each other reversely compared to European languages. For the speakers of Quechua, we are moving backwards into the future (we cannot see it - ie. it is unknown), facing the past (we can see it - ie. we remember it).
It's not often you run across something that forces you to step back and re-examine some foundational element of your daily life, but this did it for me. I mean, prior to twenty minutes ago, I would have regarded "behind" and "future" as clear antonyms. The substitution of one for the other would be -- must be -- a grammatical mistake.
However, this construction, where the future is unknown and is thus "behind" our backs, is elegant, consistent, and, frankly, pretty damned logical. It highlights beautifully how learning the mechanics of a language is merely the first step to participating in the culture of a group. There I was, thinking that I was picking things up pretty easily, when BAM, I find out that any phrase I might want to express might mean something other than I intend (perhaps, as in the case of time, even its polar opposite!) because of the baggage I carry from my first language, the unspoken assumptions and shades of color I attach to every word.
That's not to say that the European conception of time as a path we traverse is in any way "wrong". It's just a remarkable example of how two groups could logically arrive at opposing meanings for the same concept. And, honestly, I have to say that I like the Quechua/Aymara idea better. It definitely captures an essential -- if often willfully ignored -- aspect of the future: It is utterly unknowable.
I can only hope for more cool finds like this on the road behind.