Tick Tock
04/11/22 02:43
I know it is a silly thing, but I am so delighted to have our antique mechanical clock back in my bookcase and running. There are several ways to count the passing of time in our house. The digital clock in the microwave counts seconds by displaying numbers that decrease with the passage of time. The second hand on my watch sweeps around the face, making a full trip each minute. My watch is digital, so I can also have it display seconds counting from one to sixty and then starting over again. It also has a timer function that counts down like the microwave. The antique clock does not have a second hand, but the pendulum swings back and forth, making the trip from one extreme to the other and back each second. As it travels back and forth, the pendulum is attached to a lever that advances one tooth on the escarpment gear, making a tick, tock sound. The sound may seem a bit strange, or even annoying to someone who is not used to it, but to me the sound is very relaxing. The clock is right next to my recliner, and when I sit in the recliner and relax, the sound often lulls me to sleep.
Other than when they are visiting their grandparents, the clocks in our grandchildren’s world are silent. They don’t naturally think of the passage of time in terms of sound. I’ve taught the older grands to count seconds by inserting a three syllable word between numbers, counting “one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand,” or “on chimpanzee, two chimpanzee, three chimpanzee.” They still prefer a visual clue such as a second hand or a changing digital display to mark the passage of time. I can count short amounts of time in my head quite accurately. I think it is due in part to my listening to the constant and regular tick tock of the mechanical clock. It’s pace sets a rhythm. As a result, I can recognize when my heart is beating faster than my resting rate simply by feeling my pulse. I know what 60 beats per minute feels like as my finger tips press against my wrist. I don’t need a clock to check my pulse.
How we think about time is greatly influenced by language and culture. For example, if you as a person whose only language is English to draw a time line, they will most commonly draw a line from left to right with the most anxiety time on the left and the future off to the right. However, if you ask the same thing of someone whose language is Hebrew, they will draw a line from the right to the left with the past being off to the right. For a Mandarin speaker, the line will be vertical with the past at the top and the future at the bottom.
It isn’t just the direction of a line that varies with culture. People who speak only Greek tend not to think in terms of a line at all. They picture time as a three-dimensional entity, like a bottle that is filled up or emptied out. Greek speakers don’t talk of a meeting as being “long,” but rather as “big.” What we call a “short” amount of time is a “small” amount to a Greek speaker. When an English speaker talks about a long time, another English speaker knows what is meant. But if an English speaker tries to make a literal translation into Greek and refer to a long time, people will react with confusion.
People have different abilities to estimate the passage of time depending on how that passage is displayed and what their native language is. Like their Greek counterparts, Spanish and Swedish speakers are good at estimating time when the graphic on a computer screen is a container filling up, but less accurate when the graph is a line that grows. English speakers, on the other hand, are more accurate with the growing line display than with the container filling.
Perceptions of time are built into the very structure of language. The English language technically has more than three tenses, but we tend to think in terms of only three: past, present, and future. “It rained yesterday. It is raining today. It will rain tomorrow.” Other languages don’t have the need of three tenses. In German you can say Morgen regent, or “it rains tomorrow.” The same is true of Mandarin. Those subtle differences present a huge challenge for translators, who seek to do more than simply decode another language. A translator must come up with a consistent meaning that is expressed in another language, with another set of cultural conditions.
As an amateur Biblical scholar and sometimes theology geek, I am fascinated by the subtle differences in meaning expressed in language and how those meanings are lost or maintained in the translation from the original languages and cultures to contemporary language and culture. Biblical Hebrew does not have a future tense, but Biblical Greek does. This language barrier makes it easier for English speakers to think in New Testament terms than in that in Old Testament terms even when they do not know either of the original languages. Translation is made even more complex because the Bible was transmitted in Latin, a language with a future tense, for more than a thousand years.
Meanings change not only in the translation of language, but also with the passage of time. My grandchildren are less likely to think of the passage of time in terms of sound than I. They already think that TikTok is the name of a social media platform while I think of it as the passage of time. Even more dramatic is a study by Keith Chen, a behavioral economist with UCLA, who discovered that people whose native languages do not have a future tense are more likely to put money in savings and accumulate more wealth in retirement. Specifically, in his test people whose native languages were German, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch or a Scandinavian language were 31% more likely to have put money in savings in any given year than those who spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Greek. Differences in health statistics followed the same lines, with those whose languages had a future tense, like English, being 24% more likely to smoke, 29% more likely to be less physically active, and 13% more likely to be medically obese than their counterparts whose languages don’t have a future tense.
As I sit and ponder these concepts, it is reassuring to hear the clock mark my journey into my aging years.
Other than when they are visiting their grandparents, the clocks in our grandchildren’s world are silent. They don’t naturally think of the passage of time in terms of sound. I’ve taught the older grands to count seconds by inserting a three syllable word between numbers, counting “one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand,” or “on chimpanzee, two chimpanzee, three chimpanzee.” They still prefer a visual clue such as a second hand or a changing digital display to mark the passage of time. I can count short amounts of time in my head quite accurately. I think it is due in part to my listening to the constant and regular tick tock of the mechanical clock. It’s pace sets a rhythm. As a result, I can recognize when my heart is beating faster than my resting rate simply by feeling my pulse. I know what 60 beats per minute feels like as my finger tips press against my wrist. I don’t need a clock to check my pulse.
How we think about time is greatly influenced by language and culture. For example, if you as a person whose only language is English to draw a time line, they will most commonly draw a line from left to right with the most anxiety time on the left and the future off to the right. However, if you ask the same thing of someone whose language is Hebrew, they will draw a line from the right to the left with the past being off to the right. For a Mandarin speaker, the line will be vertical with the past at the top and the future at the bottom.
It isn’t just the direction of a line that varies with culture. People who speak only Greek tend not to think in terms of a line at all. They picture time as a three-dimensional entity, like a bottle that is filled up or emptied out. Greek speakers don’t talk of a meeting as being “long,” but rather as “big.” What we call a “short” amount of time is a “small” amount to a Greek speaker. When an English speaker talks about a long time, another English speaker knows what is meant. But if an English speaker tries to make a literal translation into Greek and refer to a long time, people will react with confusion.
People have different abilities to estimate the passage of time depending on how that passage is displayed and what their native language is. Like their Greek counterparts, Spanish and Swedish speakers are good at estimating time when the graphic on a computer screen is a container filling up, but less accurate when the graph is a line that grows. English speakers, on the other hand, are more accurate with the growing line display than with the container filling.
Perceptions of time are built into the very structure of language. The English language technically has more than three tenses, but we tend to think in terms of only three: past, present, and future. “It rained yesterday. It is raining today. It will rain tomorrow.” Other languages don’t have the need of three tenses. In German you can say Morgen regent, or “it rains tomorrow.” The same is true of Mandarin. Those subtle differences present a huge challenge for translators, who seek to do more than simply decode another language. A translator must come up with a consistent meaning that is expressed in another language, with another set of cultural conditions.
As an amateur Biblical scholar and sometimes theology geek, I am fascinated by the subtle differences in meaning expressed in language and how those meanings are lost or maintained in the translation from the original languages and cultures to contemporary language and culture. Biblical Hebrew does not have a future tense, but Biblical Greek does. This language barrier makes it easier for English speakers to think in New Testament terms than in that in Old Testament terms even when they do not know either of the original languages. Translation is made even more complex because the Bible was transmitted in Latin, a language with a future tense, for more than a thousand years.
Meanings change not only in the translation of language, but also with the passage of time. My grandchildren are less likely to think of the passage of time in terms of sound than I. They already think that TikTok is the name of a social media platform while I think of it as the passage of time. Even more dramatic is a study by Keith Chen, a behavioral economist with UCLA, who discovered that people whose native languages do not have a future tense are more likely to put money in savings and accumulate more wealth in retirement. Specifically, in his test people whose native languages were German, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch or a Scandinavian language were 31% more likely to have put money in savings in any given year than those who spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Greek. Differences in health statistics followed the same lines, with those whose languages had a future tense, like English, being 24% more likely to smoke, 29% more likely to be less physically active, and 13% more likely to be medically obese than their counterparts whose languages don’t have a future tense.
As I sit and ponder these concepts, it is reassuring to hear the clock mark my journey into my aging years.
