We’re used to treating time as though it were space: we move through the day, we look back on the past, and we look forward to the future.
But what if we didn’t use such metaphors? What would that say about how we perceive time? This is exactly the case for the Amondawa people of the Amazon.
Dr Chris Sinha has studied their language and culture, and he talks to linguist Daniel Midgley on this episode of Talk the Talk.
Listen to this episode
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http://danielmidgley.com/talkthetalk/talk_classic.xmlShow notes
BBC article
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13452711
Dr Sinha’s ‘Language and Cognition’ article (PDF)
http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/academic/psychology/staff/downloads/filetodownload,133398,en.pdf
Aymara, where the future is behind you (PDF)
http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~faucon/BEIJING/nunez-sweetser.pdf
