Watching your back in Aymara
Given how much I’ve e-mailed about this in the past couple of days, this entry will be short. First, there are two major conceptions of the passage of time: ego-centered (moving-ego) and event-centered (moving-time). Many languages instantiate the former with metaphors like the future is in front and the past is in back. English is one such language. So is Chinese (I think perhaps 未來 ‘future’, lit. ‘not-yet come’ is a good example). Aymara does it the other way: their word for ‘last year’ is literally ‘eye/front year,’ and their word for ‘next year’ is literally ‘behind/back year.’ These are about relating times to ego, not to other times or events. In this way, Aymara is not like English, and is not like Chinese.