In the July 2012 issue of the National Geographic, there is a piece about languages that are in danger of extinction. One of the languages is Tuvan and is spoken by 235,000 Russians. The first two examples of the Tuvan language that they use are: "songgaar" which means go back / the future and "burungaar" which means go forward / the past. At first glance I thought I had misunderstood. English speakers use the idea of looking forward, into the future; or looking back at the past. But when you think about it, it makes more sense the Tuvan way. We naturally face the things we can see. We can see the past. We can document it and be reminded of it by things that we see every day. The future approaches from a place that we cannot see, so it's reasonable to think of it coming from behind.
In the train that carries us through linear time, we have a back facing seat. We see things only as they happen and we can get a little better look as it gets behind us a bit. I don't know why we ever thought we were facing the future in the first place.
Great example
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