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Originally Posted by Glice
I think it's unfair to suggest 'the West' is obsessed with time in one way. There's a massive difference between the average German's approach to time (rigorously punctual), an Italian's (you will not get food or drink in public within 30 minutes) and rural Irish (everything happens slowly and goes on forever).
Not having spent much time with Africans, I'm sure there's a few Zim or Ghanaians who wouldn't be impressed with Amharic being taken as representative of the whole continent.
This is an interesting paper I recently read on linguistic relativity. Beware Sapir/Whorf. |
a) i didn't intend for Amharic to representative of the whole continent its just the only African language I am intimately familiar with, did you happen to speak
Shona or
Bimoba to elaborate the linguistic perspectives of time in Zimbabwe or Ghana. If y'all had experience with Africans in general you would see it was quite common, if anything I was more so connecting Ethiopians into the African concept of time by using Amharic etymologies, as we in Rasta say who feels it knows its. If y'all can't feel it, then y'all don't know it, but surely there are folks out there in SYG who have experience with Africans and have learned to see this difference in conception of time.
b) of course the "west" and "europe" do not necessarily have a monolythic interpretation of time, but I think we all could agree that the western mindset is a bit time-oriented, and my point is that in the indigenous African mind this is completely foreign, and further for the point of comparison obviously I had to draw it out into an almost dichotomy.