The Time Concept

This week, my boyfriend and I have watched ‘Arrival’ — a sci-fi movie (the production of 2016). I am generally not a big aficionado of science-fiction books and films, but that particular movie I have seen at least four times already, and I always find something new in it. (It is based on the short story titled ‘Story of Your Life’ by Ted Chiang).  The reason why I am in love with the plot is primarily the character, i.e the Anthropological Linguistics professor (Louise Banks) who has dedicated most of her life to the study of a plethora of languages. In order to decipher the message that the ET are trying to communicate, Louise is recruited to understand why 12 extraterrestrial spacecraft hover over 12 randomly chosen locations on Earth. It is a very intricate (though slow burning) plot with a myriad of various sub-topics and questions to answer, such as … 

…would science be considered more important than soft skills and communication? are they equally important for the world civilization to continue thriving?

… what is the key to civilized living – helping the next of keen in times of crisis or caring for oneself first? 

… when it is possible to know the truth about your future, would one still want to reveal this truth, no matter how painful at times it could be? would it make a person collapse in fear and utter misery or cherish every single moment of what is left?

… … how can countries stand together and learn and grow together? The planet seems to have so many communicators, but so little communication. 

… what if the perception of Time is too narrow-minded on Earth? how would other civilizations perceive the concept of Time? 

In the movie, the ET Time is not linear. On the contrary, their written language is represented by circular logograms. In the movie, Louise says, ‘Imagine as if you were writing with both of your hands at the same time (left hand from left and right hand from right), and both hands would meet at one point with the complete idea in one sentence — that is the circular way of perceiving communication and time.’ The ET see the Time and Communication in a multi-dimensional and far-seeing way. 

When my students and I discuss the English Verb Tenses in context (mainly through reading and listening to excerpts), I am frequently asked: But teacher, ...how can this verb be translated in my language?The answer to this is… it cannot be translated — it can only be perceived contextually,which made me think and ponder another question: How do different cultures perceive the past — present — future? For instance, in Russian, there is no such tense as Present Perfect. Thus, it is particularly challenging to understand the way English speakers view the concept of (drum roll!) Present Perfect = completed action with no specified time, but specific result in the present — like seriously, what the heck? why complicate things? However, that is where the collateral beauty is. It is through this mind-blowing, challenging scheme that we broaden our horizon and learn not only the language, but the way cultures perceive Time. 

We all know that when we learn any new language, we discover new viewpoints, new means of processing information, which changes the way we think for good. When learning a new language, we grow more empathetic and compassionate since we accept that our culture and way of thinking is not necessarily ‘the only right way to perceive the world’. When we learn a new language, we should learn to hover over a sentence— we should learn to see above each. single. word.(that we frequently want to translate) but rather perceive the whole message that we are trying to communicate.