Timeline for I am confused by how time is discussed in Chinese,
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 22, 2020 at 19:07 | comment | added | Kyle Delaney | I had thought the character for "above" was meant to look like the part of a plant that's above ground and the character for "below" was meant to look like the part of a plant that's below ground. The roots are the future because they haven't grown out of the ground yet, and the stem and leaves are the past because that's when you had to have planted the seed in order for it to be flowering now. | |
| Jan 14, 2017 at 7:10 | answer | added | Dingdang | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 23, 2016 at 21:00 | comment | added | Brian Tung | @jdods: Occasionally, at work, someone will refer to moving a meeting up an hour, or down 30 minutes, and pretty frequently, they do mean earlier by an hour, or later by thirty minutes (because that's the way it looks on a day-at-a-glance calendar). But in practice, it's ambiguous enough that I usually ask them to clarify with a specific new time. | |
| Dec 21, 2016 at 0:58 | answer | added | YYC | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 17, 2016 at 14:23 | answer | added | wks | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 16, 2016 at 14:25 | comment | added | jdods | It's as if time is a train moving in our direction so the front is obviously what we experience first. But if we imagine it vertically, then we are falling through time, so the upper most parts are what we experience first. @claw, I'm glad you called attention to the English etymology. I never knew that. Any examples in English corresponding to 上 and 下 temporal usage? | |
| Dec 15, 2016 at 8:59 | comment | added | Claw | A good example illustrating my previous comment is the expression, "putting the cart before the horse." It can refer to placing something in the wrong order or doing something in the wrong order. In either sense, the temporal and spatial metaphors are aligned (i.e., having the cart first and then the horse). | |
| Dec 15, 2016 at 8:05 | comment | added | Claw | It's interesting to note that even the English words "before" and "after" actually demonstrate a metaphor that matches the way Chinese thinks of time, even though they're the opposite of how modern English speakers think of time. "Before" literally means to be in front of ("fore"), while "after" literally means to be behind ("aft"). English speakers don't even realize this anymore because the metaphor has since been reversed in modern usage. | |
| Dec 14, 2016 at 21:42 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackChinese/status/809151623524130821 | ||
| S Dec 14, 2016 at 20:47 | history | suggested | mootmoot | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
add correspondence character for the pinyin
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| Dec 14, 2016 at 18:33 | comment | added | mootmoot | Alway check the full context of the character. 下 and 上 ，each of them derived multiple meaning. As well as 后 and 前. E.g. full context of 下 zdic.net/z/14/js/4E0B.htm | |
| Dec 14, 2016 at 18:00 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Dec 14, 2016 at 20:47 | |||||
| Dec 14, 2016 at 7:40 | answer | added | Tang Ho♦ | timeline score: 12 | |
| Dec 14, 2016 at 4:45 | comment | added | Mou某♦ | probably it's easier for you to think of time linearly: ---前---now---后--- and ---上---now---下--- && then you can see the mentality is not far off from English | |
| Dec 14, 2016 at 4:13 | review | First posts | |||
| Dec 14, 2016 at 4:29 | |||||
| Dec 14, 2016 at 4:05 | history | asked | Clancy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |