(But that wasn't in a Chinese context)

I’d say it’s a result of how the Chinese consider time and space—up and back go together, as do down and ahead.

Except in 前天 and 后天, which just don’t really make any sense at all now that I think about it.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmm and does it also apply to a situation where you are not talking about things that would typically be on a calendar?

@Cerberus Such as?

@Cerberus well, "above" and " below" are also used to mean "before/at the start of" and "next, after, at the end of"

I mean, ‘previous’ and ‘next’ are generally ‘above’ and ‘below’ (or ‘up’ and ‘down’).

Relaxing monster hands.

@KitFox gesundheit.

@JanusBahsJacquet Well, as in the Roman Empire fell long before the Vikings arrived in Britain.

@KitFox I’ve always thought monsters—whether just their hands or the whole thing—were anything but relaxing, personally …

Are the monster hands causing relaxation, or are they being relaxed?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 OK that seems like a solid connection that could not be based on writing conventions (like calendars).

@Cerberus Nope. There, ‘before’ would be (以)前, which is ‘before’ and ‘in front of’, but not ‘below’.

I.e. prehistoric.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Causing.

@JanusBahsJacquet Hmmmmm...

@Cerberus Oh no—it could very easily be based on writing conventions. In fact, writing is the explanation most commonly given for it.

Oh!

Remember: the traditional way of writing Chinese is top to bottom, right to left

Anything that comes before in the text is above it.

Right.

(The word for ‘context’ is similarly 上下文 ‘above-below-text’ or ‘text that comes above and below [this]’.)

Cute.

So it is good to know that this Chinese vision of time is probably based on writing.

About time one of these smileys got what it deserved. Look at him, he's on tilt!

There is also another different time perspective: ‘last year’ and ‘next year’ is, respectively, 去年 ‘go [hence] year’ and 来年 ‘come [hither] year’.

@JanusBahsJacquet It's interesting to compare Chinese words with English words. In Chinese, you form new words by combining other Chinese words. In English, you form new words by combining Greek or Latin words. So the English words seem a bit more abstract to me.

For some reason chat wouldn't let me upload it. Doesn't it accept animaged GIFs?

The notions of up and down are no doubt older / more established than left/right, so that might be a reason why writing affected (or effected) conceptual metaphors in Chinese but not in Greek/Latin.

@JanusBahsJacquet I was taught 后年

@Robusto it does

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That’s in two years’ time

@JanusBahsJacquet right.

hm.

(Though 明年 is more common than 来年)

Yes, that was what I was thinking of

Japanese only uses 来年, though (having borrowed it from Chinese)

wow I feel rusty

@JanusBahsJacquet Hmm the coming year would match the Western metaphor.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 长锈了吗？ :-þ

@JanusBahsJacquet Well, all the kanji are essentially borrowed or adapted from Chinese.

@Cerberus Though I guess the future is coming and the past going no matter what way you look at it—it’s just the direction it’s travelling that’s different.

@Robusto Haha nice. That's what you get for wearing Uggs...

Is it just me, or aren’t allegations of bastardy still fightin’ words in some parts of the world?

@JanusBahsJacquet Umm is that true?

@Robusto True—I meant that they say rainen, which is onyomi, unlike (say) 今日, which is kyō (kunyomi).

@JanusBahsJacquet 过一个年我还没说中文

Are you not naturally facing that which comes to you?

@JanusBahsJacquet Ah, but you are yourself coming from the past and going to the future.

@JanusBahsJacquet Point taken.

@Cerberus Not necessarily—someone who’s approaching you from behind is also ‘coming’, and someone whose retreating back you’re looking at is also walking away from you.

Not necessarily. But naturally?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 不用担心，我也曾经达到了挺流利的水平，但好几年都没怎么讲过了，大部分被我给忘掉了。

For someone to come, there must be the perspective of an observer. No observer: no coming. And an observer naturally watches that which he observes, and hence faces it.

I am of course speculating/theorising here.

@Cerberus Less so in Chinese than in English. The ‘come’ and ‘go’ verbs in Chinese semantically hold only one piece of information: movement towards the speaker, or movement away from the speaker. The observer is always the speaker in Chinese.

The speaker.

That's the same perspective.

You could surmise that up and down are earlier forms than left and right in Chinese because the hanzi for the former require three strokes each whereas the latter require five each.

That would make sense...

@Robusto I'm not sure the hanzi are related

@Cerberus But there’s a difference in that the Chinese verbs are less abstract than their European counterparts. If I’m on the third floor and you’re down on the street waiting for me, I would naturally say, “I’ll come down now”, meaning I treat you as the point of observation, even though I’m the speaker. This is impossible in Chinese. I would have to say, “I’ll go down now”.

上 up 下 down 左 left 右 right

The ones for up and down certainly seem to mirror each other. And left and right have the same first two strokes.

@Robusto That's the hand radical, isn't it?

手 is hand.

hm, maybe not the hand radical

@JanusBahsJacquet Right, that makes sense. It is horribly unpredictable in Indo-European.

The left and right characters have the 工 radical. Wait, I'm wrong according to denshi jisho.

Which is funny because 左 essentially repeats the radical.

@Robusto Fewer strokes doesn’t necessarily imply earlier invention, though. 上 and 下 are both 指事, which are often very old; but 左 and 右 are both derived from 象形 characters that both came to be written 𠂇 (hence the need for disambiguation and thus derivation by adding 工 and 口), and 象形 are just as archaic as 指事.

@JanusBahsJacquet Interesting.

(𠂇 being the result of what was originally simple drawings of a left and a right hand, respectively)

Now I'm confused. According to denshi jisho, 左 and 右 do not have the same radical. Thought it seems intuitive to me that they would.

@Robusto yeah I just discovered that.

The radical system is just annoying.

𠂇 should be the radical.

@Robusto 左 has 工 and 右 has 口?

Another fond theory shot to hell. I mean, I've thought that ever since I first learned left and right in Japanese. Early on, it was a mnemonic for me.

Left hand holds the square, right hand feeds the mouth.

@KitFox Other way around!

@JanusBahsJacquet Yep.

No.

@KitFox left hand does the work, right hand feeds your mouth

工 is a square, 口 is mouth

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Like I said.

@KitFox Oh, I see what you mean now. I thought you meant 口 as the square

> Guy Claims Patent On Photographing People In Races And Then Selling Them Their Photos; Sues Photography Company

工 isn’t a square, though?!?

@KitFox it's confusing the way you put it, because the mouth is a square

Oh. I suppose if I didn't read it as kou, I would have understood you.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I agree. Except that isn't a radical, even though I always thought it was. I just never bothered to investigate because I was certain it was.

A square like the tool, not a square like the shape.

@Robusto me too!

@KitFox Aaaaah, I see!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Them inscrutable Orientals! Them's just . . . inscrutable!

Tryin' ta trick us!

This is offensive, and he can’t hide it in Spanish to stop it from being so:

@KitFox TIL that it's a square. So they're both squares.

I don’t think Master Bron will ever give up this one.

@Robusto I suppose it’s not a radical because it only occurs in a small handful of characters (左右存在 are the only ones I can think of).

I’m washing my hands of that one.

Oh. No, I’m wrong. There are a few more: 有友灰厷

@tchrist Dammit, now I missed the whole thing!

Crap.

All the first page users now have 20k.

Here’s a picture that shows an older, more seal-like form of 左:

Put it on a separate line with just the link.

There we go

@JanusBahsJacquet I even had something that no casual Anglophone Spanish-learner would recognize. It’s that which he answered with the shitty comment. He had been blathering along in Spanish about this and that, and later said something like how because versionize wasn’t in the OED, it could not be a word.

@tchrist I just managed to catch a glimpse of something with an aunt who … spun wool? No, played the guitar? Something like that?

I said something like En cuanto a lo del OED, tengo una tía que toca la guitarra, ¿sabes? Digas come dijeres, al fin y al cabo, todo sale igual.

"I have an aunt who plays the guitar" => "And what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?"

It would have made me happier if you hadn't bothered to engage, particularly in Spanish.

Plus the future subjunctive isn’t taught much. :)

@KitFox I didn’t start with the Spanish, you know.

But point taken.

And you’re right in any event.

I know. And I understand the point he was making.

And now we're settled, right?

Or do I need to go back there?

I am certainly not going to touch that thread again, but I’m sure it is growing.

@JanusBahsJacquet So it is a kinda of hand radical, in a way

I fully expect at least one of them to complain on Meta about how I deleted very useful information in Spanish on that thread.

@KitFox I'm already writing an angry meta post! How did you know!?

So I can waste next week responding to it.

Lucky guess.

I just don’t know what to say to a person who thinks that if it is not in the OED that this constitutes proof that something is not a word. Oxford themselves strongly dispute that very notion, again and again. I cannot believe anybody who is serious about language believes such nonsense.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 The non-radical bit of it, yes. It’s an old pictogram of a hand (in the ‘normal’ form, where it hasn’t been squeezed into a corner of a character by other elements, it is now written 又).

Plus there is the whole productive affix thing. I give up.

@JanusBahsJacquet It's amazing that they managed to keep such a complicated system of writing working for so long.

Basically, I was saying that his crud about OED testability for wordiness is as relevant as the price of tea in China, and that it works out in the end.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 … and for so many languages that are so ill-fitted for it.

Then he started in with caca, and I was subthused into discontinuing, or vice versa, or something.

@tchrist The price of tea in China is much nicer than the price of tea here. :-/

heh

Tea sounds nice.

@JanusBahsJacquet And I’ll bet your aunt plays better guitar than mine, too. :)

Bad tea is cheap. Good tea is dear.

It may well be that low-grade tea in China is yummier than low-grade tea here is. I’ve no doubt it’s less costly.

@tchrist I doubt it. I highly doubt it. Unless you have no aunts, that is. She probably plays the twin-row accordion better than yours, though.

@JanusBahsJacquet Yeah, true. Even for Modern Standard Mandrain it doesn't fit all that well.

@JanusBahsJacquet I’ve one by blood and another eight by marriage.

Not counting the ex–aunt-in-laws.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Still a much better fit than Japanese and Korean, though.

@tchrist Good heavens!

@tchrist Consecutive or concurrent?

@KitFox Concurrent!

Hence no exes.

That's a lot of uncles.

@tchrist Incidentally, I don’t quite get what Dan actually meant by his comment. Something about reverse Midas, but what exactly?!

@KitFox I’ve eight uncles by blood and one by marriage.

@JanusBahsJacquet The caca one, or the OED one? I dunno. It detected non-progression of ideas.

You shouldn’t go around marrying your aunts and uncles, you know.

@tchrist The caca one. I mean, it was obviously some kind of play on toca, but …

@JanusBahsJacquet It’s actually genetically ok provided that they are the same sex as you.

But what if you adopt?

shocked

Both my parents came from families with five children of whom one was female and four were male — in both cases.

@tchrist But still—ten people in a marriage is just a few too many.

So I thought that was the normal thing.

I kept waiting for more siblings, but I only got two.

And all my parents’ siblings married.

Some twice.

Hence a full house of aunts-and-uncles.

All three of my parents have/had one sibling, and there’s only one set of siblings that’s still a set (my dad + his sister), so I was never surprised I didn’t have any siblings myself.

But that’s nothing. My maternal grandmother was one of eleven and my paternal grandfather one of nine. You have no idea how many second cousins I have, and neither do I.

@JanusBahsJacquet Eep oh gosh, I wasn’t counting my step-parents’ siblings! That makes for many more.

I have 8 aunts/uncles + spouses just on my dad's side. But most of them are much older or live far away so effectively I have only one practical uncle on that side.

Grandparents, much more normal—mine all had somewhere between six and ten siblings there, too. But next generation: slimtime!

My paternal grandfather was the first one in his family born here not Denmark.

His elder siblings were born there.

I’m guessing probably almost around the same time as my stepmothers father was born (1916)?

Right.

He grew up speaking Danish but didn’t pass it on to his kids and had mostly lost it by the time he passed away in his mid-eighties. A couple of his kids did study it in college, and the PhD bacteriologist actually lived there a couple of years.

But essentially, it is all completely gone now from our family.

… and another chance for us to finally take over the world once and for all is lost to us …

@JanusBahsJacquet I think he was saying that shit plays the guitar as well.

:-/

But the toca/caca euphony doubtless entered it. I just found it unfunny.

@tchrist Oh, I suppose that could be. I read it as a kind of cualquiera cosa que toca, lo hace caca.

Reverse Midas Touch.

Well see, that was more like my first reading, too.

Playing on the double meaning of tocar

But then I isolated caca as the subject not the object.

OVS ordering is more common in native speakers than in learners, though.

Well, if it was meant to be funny, it was obviously too obscure to succeed.

Yep.

@tchrist I think I’m an exception to that. I always feel like I’m overusing OVS in Spanish—if natives use it even more than me, you might as well go on and declare Spanish an altogether OVS language.

Well, it isn’t.

Thing is, it is not strongly SVO.