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Comment by arximboldi | Hacker News Reader

I am confused by what the article says. At least in Spain we don't use volumetric relative measures for time (big/small) but linear ("corto"/"largo", short/long). This is particularly true when for the examples in the article ("duración" duration: "larga duración" o "corta duración"; "wedding", a "big wedding" is a wedding with a lot of people, a "long wedding" is a wedding that takes a lot of time). The only case that might be different is that in Spanish it is common to use "mucho/poco" (a lot, little) as an adverb with "durar" ("to last") as in "sth lasts a lot" as opposed "sth lasts long" or "cuanto dura?" ("how much it lasts/takes?")

As other pointed out, the "now" that blends into the future is maybe a more interesting feature of how time is understood in Spanish vs other languages.

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It is probably something to do with cultural habits in different geographic areas, not necessarily language. I moved from an English speaking region (Ontario, Canada) to another English speaking region (British Columbia, Canada) 5,000 km away. In BC people seem to measure distance using time but in Ontario they use distance. In Ontario they will say that a town is 150 km away but in BC they say that a town is 45 minutes away. Possibly this has to do with the mountainous terrain of BC which restricts your travel routes and speed, while Ontario is relatively flat, allows many different routes between point A and B, and you can speed without dying.

On the other hand, I also speak Russian, and switch between Russian and English several times per day. When I speak/think in Russian I tend to not worry about the time order of things that I speak about because Russian has few verb tenses and makes it easy to function in an eternal now where actions are either ongoing or completed. Good for getting an overall perspective on things.

Albertan here; we're flat and our roads are straight, but we also measure distances by travel time, whether in the city ("I live 20 minutes from the mall") or across the province ("Calgary is three hours from Edmonton").

I suspect that it's a western thing more than a terrain thing. I wonder if that applies to the western USA as well?

Another interesting thing that I've noticed is that Europeans and North Americans have a very different concept of historical time and relative distance. To me, a building that has stood for 100 years is OLD, and 200km (Somewhere that's "about an hour and a half to two hours away") is a day trip that's nothing out of the ordinary. When I was in the UK, I noticed that people held the opposite view - 100 years ago was just yesterday, relatively speaking, while traveling 200km for a day trip was inconceivable.

as a european, in canada and the US I was constantly confused by directions. america uses street names and cardinal directions (turn north on I-??? then west on ...). europeans think in terms of sequences of towns (to get to munich I must drive on the autobahn via Stuttgart, Ulm, Augsburg).

I once travelled from toronto to chicago by car and decided to write down my own directions from google maps because I felt the ones provided were useless. Boy, was I lost when I didnt see a roadsign for windsor/detroit.

That's funny.

Here's a thought: the reason for the difference is due to how New World cities were artificially made rectangular whereas the Old World cities have a concentric circles growing out feel to them.

Go on Google Maps and look at a city like Montreal and you'll see that the streets are very rectangular.

Look at a city like Paris and you'll see a spiderweb instead of rectangles.

In the UK Google Maps does road numbers wrong. So A4042 should be "ay four o four two" but Maps says the less efficient "ay four thousand and forty-two" (it's also wrong, it's a code not a number; like calling 0b20 "twenty").

It throws me much more than it should.

0h20! lol ... there are 10 types of people in the world ...

Another aspect may be the influence of the States in Western Canada. Time is understandable to both Canadians/foreigners. Kilometres, not necessarily.

In Ireland, we went metric in the 1980s, but people still measured distances in miles until the road signs went fully metric about 15 years ago. Now (older) people measure distances in time, because they can't remember the distance in miles and can't grep kms.

US West checking in: Commutes/travel by duration, exercise and directions by distance.

I'm from Boston, and I think it's most common to ask in distance, and answer in time. "How far is it?" "20 minutes." I'm a map geek and often answer in distance, which often prompts, "And about how far is that? Like 20 minutes?"

Yeah, my comment was also in the line of wondering if there are any other Spanish speaking communities where the big/small for time actually exists or if it was common in latin America or so...

W.r.t language, culture and thought an interesting experience for me has been to learn German (been living in Berlin for 5 years). Germans have this reputation for being "rational", "organized", etc and while like any stereotype that is only true in a very limited way, the language shows a lot of this.

In particular, I find this in the grammar structure, where depending on tense, nesting of verbs, etc. the verb always has to go on a very specific position (often at the end). As a foreigner I often struggle with this, because it forces you to build the whole sentence in your head before you start speaking. You can not add stuff "on the way" because then you would have needed to put the verb in a different position. Of course my language is not very good, but I noticed that even native speakers make very small pauses between sentences. Likewise, as a listener, you should really not interrupt, often because vital information (e.g the verb) comes often at the end. This is also very ingrained in the culture (German kids are really told that its a total no-no to interrupt someone). In general, due to all this, I feel that discussions in German at least feel very rational and ideas are often eloquently and effectively conveyed.

In contrast, the Spanish grammar is completely flexible and words can be reordered very flexibly to convey different emphasis and subtle differences in subtext. One can add nested sentences forever in and endless ramble and often authors in both sides of the Atlantic use this with a great poetic effect. On the other hand, this means that arguments can be often expressed in much more chaotic manner, thinking along the way and just adding stuff as it comes to your mind. I am from the south of Spain, where people also add funny metaphors, remarks and comparisons all the time. Listeners will unapologetically interrupt you when they see fit, turning the discussion into a verbal war full of hyperbole and humor, that is a lyrical as it is not rational.

I think you people are also going to enjoy this reading. I did. :)

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-different-cultures-unders...

I'm Mexican and everything you said about Spanish Spanish seems to me to also hold for Mexican Spanish. I wouldn't be surprised if someone Swedes showed up now saying the article is also wrong about Swedish. :)

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