This isn't a /pol/ thread, I'm just curious about the claim that a lot of African languages do not include abstract concepts, such as future hypothetical (would, could, will, might) or past (would have, could have, should have, etc).
Firstly, is it even true? If so, was it a matter of a lack of necessity for these words and concepts in tribal hunter-gatherer life? Or is it the case that these concepts don't exist because the speakers' consciousness simply does not grasp them?
Unfortunately I think a lot of studies into this wouldn't clear ethics, but it's a fascinating topic.
I doubt that past possibilities (eg would have) do not exist, given how distinct the feeling of regret is, and how it ties into past possibilities and the how you would change your actions. Future hypotheticals would need to exist in usage, as they are fundamental to planning, which is a basic aspect of hunting and human interaction.
Evan Cook
First of all when people say their languages "don't have past tense" or whatever, they don't mean that their language doesn't have a way of expressing those concepts. You have to realize that in linguistics "tense" means something different than in everyday conversation. It refers to morphological marking, not just reference to the past. In that sense, English doesn't have future tense. We have past and present tense marking on our verbs, but no future tense. We express future tense in other ways, such as with the auxiliary "will."
The misconception that certain languages don't have a way of expressing the concept "past" essentially stems from irresponsible or ignorant reporting.
Ethan Jenkins
bbc.com/news/science-environment-13452711 That's about an Amazon tribe but yeah seems to be true. Think it's more likely unnecessary for tribal life than inability to grasp the concepts.
Matthew Kelly
Nice, time to go back and tell this to my friends of /pol/
Adam Wilson
>"has no word for 'time'" This is no way suggests that they don't understand or use the concept of abstract time. We don't have words in English for tons of things that other languages have. Does that mean we can't grasp the concepts or use them frequently? Absolutely not. For instance we don't have a word for "in the next three days." Does that mean that concept isn't part of our world? Does it mean we don't use the concept in daily life? NO. We just don't have a word for it, just like we don't have a word for countless other things.
Juan Gray
OP, even Ebonics lacks those features.
"We is going to the store" rather than "we are" or "we will," etc.
Future-oriented cognition seems to have evolved among northern populations, where it was needed to survive harsh winters.
Levi Rogers
What I personally find interesting about African "languages" is they are the only languages in the world to use primitive clicks and clacks with their mouth and jaws which is a method of communication many scientists compare to bees (they communicate by performing little tap dances with each other)
Elijah Thompson
"We is" is present tense. "Ebonics" just doesn't have the same subject-verb agreement as English. African American English actually has a quite elaborate temporal auxiliary system, including auxiliary verbs denoting near future, distant future, present, recent past, distant past, and more.
Justin Roberts
Only a relatively small number of African languages uses these sounds, called "clicks," actually velaric ingressive obstruents. I'd be interested to hear why you'd assign them the label "primitive"
Ryan Lewis
>lack of the concept "in the next three days" is equivalent to not having an idea of time represented in language Sure, user, sure
>no word for a random specific unit of time is the same as no word for time itself reaching a little far there, lad
Jaxson James
A lot of "abstract" concepts in European languages aren't really that abstract either. The word abstract itself means just "to pull something out", which is a metaphor for abstracting. Calculus was originally the act of counting something with small stones (calculii). Of course, all IE languages have words for numbers larger than 2 (though the words for larger ones are sometimes different, suggesting that they developed later). I'm no expert, but "we will" sounds like a recent development, too. Middle English?
Elijah Torres
only black people speak them -> black people look like monkeys -> monkeys are inferior to humans -> black people are inferior to humans
Chase Ramirez
>implying Capoids aren't white
Jeremiah Myers
SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS IS NOT TRUE AND CAN NEVER BE TRUE. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. DO NOT BE RACIST ABOUT THIS.
LANGUAGES MAY BE A MEDIUM OF INFORMATION, THE GRAMMARS/STRUCTURES OF SOME LANGUAGES MAY BE PREDISPOSED TO CONVEYING SOME TYPES OF INFORMATION MORE EASILY THAN OTHER LANGUAGES, THOSE SAME STRUCTURES MAY HAVE COGNITIVE LIMITS THANKS TO THE COMPLEXITY OF HANDLING THEM DURING USE, AND INFORMATION MAY STIMULATE A BUTTERFLY EFFECT OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT... BUT DON'T LET THAT FOOL YOU INTO TAKING A RACIST PATH.
/POL/TARDS GET OUT OF HERE.
Wyatt Gonzalez
Clicks seem to be a consequence of enormous phoneme registers than anything else. All languages with click consonants tend to have over 50 consonants.
Connor Clark
>the research suggests that language originated in Africa I hope that's something the retarded shitlib journalist made up in his brainlet head. Because that's an extremely bold and ambitious statement. The one that somehow seems to appear whenever a journalist reads a paper he doesn't understand at all.
Brayden Rodriguez
>hear a claim >ask about it on a board most likely to know about it >"RREEEEEE GET OUT"
Fuck you. Maybe OP should just LISTEN AND BELIEVE, right?
