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#160489 06/18/06 12:31 PM
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Interesting that the Aymara term for future is nayra timpu. The latter word is obviously a loan from Spanish tiempo. Wonder what the older word for time in Aymara was? (Also, here's an article by Núñez and Sweetser on the Aymara concept of time.)




This diccionario Aymara-Español lists pacha as the Aymara for tiempo. Nary a timpu in sight.

#160490 06/18/06 12:36 PM
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Once while fishing (and not catching many fish) I tried to decide how a flowing stream best represented the flow of time. I decided it depended on the point of view. To me, wading in the creek, the future was upstream, where water molecules were on their way to flow past me eventually. To a boat coming downstream (or a water molecule), the future was further downstream and the past was upstream. I highly recommend this sort of musing on days when the fish aren't biting.

#160491 06/18/06 12:43 PM
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Heraclitus: Time is like a river flowing downstream. And you cannot step in the same river twice.

Mrs. Heraclitus: Don't be an ass, Heraclitus. Of course you can step in the same river twice. All you have to do is go downstream at the same rate that the river is flowing..

Heraclitus was amazed! He ran down to the river Styx and put his foot in. Then he ran downstream and put his foot in again and he ran downstream and put his foot in again, and again, and again, until he reached the Aegean Sea and he drowned.

(With thanks to Severn Darden)

#160492 06/18/06 12:56 PM
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Nary a timpu in sight.

So, the linguists could be wrong, their informants may have lied, or there may be more than one dialect of Aymara. Maybe Mrs Herakleitos can help. Of course, the dictionary could be wrong or abridged. Nayra (glossed as 'eye') isn't in the online dictionary either. No eye to be seen.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
#160493 06/18/06 01:33 PM
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what do dandelions have to do with this? (tampopo?)

#160494 06/18/06 02:13 PM
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what do dandelions have to do with this

I was thinking of time as being a little like the Happiness Machine in Dandelion Wine or the slurpy ramen in Juzo Itami's film. Mount Tam(alpais) and German slang for butt figured in somehow, too. And the staid lion chews through el tiempo noshingly.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
#160495 06/18/06 05:18 PM
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thanks--i hadn't thought of the time as element in tampopo, but then, every time i watch, it i see things i missed the last time.my sister lives in Japan, and i slowly gain insight to elements of japanese culture from her, (and from reading). i have visited there once, but spent more time visiting family than sight seeing (but i did do a fair amount of sightseeing --considering i don't speak any japanese!

i don't know about the happiness machine in Dandelion Wine --but the song Dandelion Wine does deal with memories, and times past (is there something special about dandeleon wine and nostalgia?--never had any)

it does seem like we travel backwards through life.. hindsight is 20/20, but we are blind to the future.

#160496 06/19/06 12:19 AM
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Quote:

Nary a timpu in sight.

So, the linguists could be wrong, their informants may have lied, or there may be more than one dialect of Aymara. Maybe Mrs Herakleitos can help. Of course, the dictionary could be wrong or abridged. Nayra (glossed as 'eye') isn't in the online dictionary either. No eye to be seen.




Or pacha is the native word for time, maybe not in the sense of time as a generic concept, but, say, the time that Achipu was shaman. Since the only vowels in Aymara seem to be A, I and U it would make sense that if tiempo were taken in as a loan word it would become timpu. Also, the language recorded in this could well be an Aymara/Spanish creole.

#160497 06/19/06 01:17 PM
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Alex, your fishing musings echoed precisely what the study showed: that how you look at it ...depends, it turns out, on whether they’re picturing themselves as being in motion relative to time or time itself as moving. If you're standing in the stream, the "future" comes to you, but if you're on a boat you're moving towards the future.

I don't know anything about the Aymara peoples' culture, but it seems to me that, for people who may believe that they have no control over what happens to them; that the future will be whatever God's or the Fates' will is, it would make perfect sense that there is no point in trying to see into it; it would be like trying to see behind themselves.

Fascinating article, Anna--thank you for posting it!

#160498 06/19/06 08:46 PM
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Quote:

Heraclitus: Time is like a river flowing downstream. And you cannot step in the same river twice.

Mrs. Heraclitus: Don't be an ass, Heraclitus. Of course you can step in the same river twice. All you have to do is go downstream at the same rate that the river is flowing..
(With thanks to Severn Darden)




HA! That reminds me of the comic strip I read once...

Moses, looking down, standing at the head of all the tribes, his wife scowling beside him, saying, "So you couldn't ask the burning bush for directions?!"

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