The confusing way Mexicans tell time | Hacker News Reader

The confusing way Mexicans tell time

bbc.com

111 pointskawera129 comments

2 fun things I learned.

1. In kirundi (a common language in Burundi) there is one word for both yesterday and tomorrow. They don't confuse the meaning because of the context of the sentence. But when my friend speaking Kirundi spoke french with me on the phone, he often interchanged the two... I never knew if he would visit the next day or had already visited me.

http://amajambo.ijuru.com/?q=yesterday&lang=en&start=0 http://amajambo.ijuru.com/?q=tomorrow&lang=en&start=0

2. In swahili (at least in Tanzania), time is told inversly. Think of a circular clock where the 12 o'clock is 6 o'clock, 3 o'clock is 9 o'clock. 9 o'clock is 3 o'clock. Yes it was very confusing to me, but you can get used to anything.

In Hindi too, the word for yesterday and tomorrow is the same. Usually we can understand which from the context. But many times a clarification is needed like prefixing "in the future" or "in the past" to the word in question.

So the word does simply mean "a day around today"?

It literally means yesterday "and" tomorrow, same word. Imagine if word for both tomorrow AND yesterday was "yesterday"

Yestermorrow

No it specifically means either tomorrow or yesterday. It's weird to explain.

I was told by someone who learned Swahili that they don't say sunrise or sunset and, instead, say 6 o'clock (owing to the consistency of the equatorial sunsets/sunrises). If true, it's an interesting example of place can influence the way we understand our world.

> In swahili (at least in Tanzania), time is told inversly.

Could this be under the influence of Arabic script? After all, Swahili used to be written in that script.

[Edit: In particular, I meant because Arabic is written right-to-left; I think the parent commenter was saying that Swahili speakers think of a clock as moving what we would consider counter-clockwise.]

This video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2mekalOTas

claims that it's because these countries are near the equator, and their sunrise and sunset times are very consistent throughout the year (exactly 12 hours apart). So, they have twelve hours after sunrise and twelve hours after sunset.

It's very possible. In Urdu, a a language with strong roots in Farsi and Arabic, and spoken in Pakistan, India ... Iran?, the word tomorrow and yesterday are both "kal". But the (auxiliary) verb associated with "kal" will clearly determine whether the tense is referenced as a tomorrow or a yesterday.

"Kal awoge?" "Will you come 'kal'?

"Kal ayeh?" "Did you come 'kal'"?

My mother speaks Urdu. She too confuses the English versions sometimes. This mispeaking of hers is one the great sources of love we have for her. And she tries her best not give us a chance to show it!

> In kirundi (a common language in Burundi) there is one word for both yesterday and tomorrow.

This is true in Urdu and Hindi as well.

Yep. Not sure about Kirundi, but in Hindi it's not really an issue since the tense of the sentence gives it away.

Not always. I've to use "aane wala" and "bita hua" quite often.

So it's like saying

I will be at home tomorrow.

I was at home tomorrow?

Sounds rather efficient :D

Essentially. When there is confusion, extra words are added to clarify as dingo_bat mentions above.

The only confusing thing here is how this got to become an article. There is no magical or complex thing about "Ahorita". In the states some people may tell you "Give me a sec" and have you wait for a couple of minutes. Yet I don't see an article saying "The confusing way Americans tell the time".

Unlike the author I know what I am talking about because I am an actuall Mexican.

>Unlike the author I know what I am talking about because I am an actuall Mexican.

That means you don't know what you're talking about. If you are immersed in it you definitely won't be confused about it at all. This article is written for people who are not Mexican observing from the outside.

It's like someone from the US claiming the imperial measurement system isn't confusing. The more immersed you are, the less relevant your view is to outsiders.

>If you are immersed in it you definitely won't be confused about it at all.

That stands for everything, and it would still prove that it's not the thing that it's confusing, but it depends on the familiarity (or lack thereof) with it.

That only applies if I have spent my entire life in Mexico, which I haven't. I have traveled the world quite a lot, and I have found many funny things, but this is not one of them.

In English we have a very context-sensitive timing word: 'soon'. Soon can mean 5 seconds from now or much more, depending on context.

'I'm leaving for the airport soon.' This probably means within a few minutes or hours.

'Soon my kids will be all grown up and leaving for college.' This means anything up to a decade or more. Nobody would expect my son to leave today, even though the wording is the same as my airport declaration.

This rarely causes any trouble, despite the large difference in meaning.

This is truly the direct parallel.

"I'll be leaving soon" probably means within a half an hour.

"It'll be done real soon now" - means possibly never, but probably eventually.

Even worse if you're from Yorkshire.

"When will we get there?" "Directly"

"How far is it?" "Down the road"

And soon is not given in an answer to how long something will take, unless you wanted to annoy someone.

If I asked when will the ice cream get here, and they answered soon, I would ask them to clarify, or just leave, knowing they had no idea themselves.

I think you nailed it. Ahorita == Soon

In America, if you asked when something is being restocked, no one is going to say "in a second" or even "in a bit" when they really mean in 5 hours.

Partner: Hey, when is that new api going to be ready?

Me: Ah, it's going to be a bit.

No idea what time period I meant there? That's fine, I probably didn't either. But somewhere between two days and two weeks depending on when the due date was.

And that is a stupid answer.

"This project will be done in 2 weeks"

In America, people say "just a sec" even though you will wait for more than one second. The confusing way Americans count seconds.

It would never mean 5 hours though. And if the person knew it was 5 hours or even just X hours, they would likely say it with greater precision than 'just a sec'.

"Just a sec" implies an indefinite amount of time on the order of that which can be reasonably measured in seconds.

And almost always ties into something the person is already doing. Like if you asked someone to get you a Coke and they were pouring some chips, they'd say, "just a sec" to mean, "sure, after I'm done with this."

The confusing way I used to piss off all my roommates

I agree. Also they make it seem like this particular usage of the word "ahorita" is so unique, but reading the article I got the feeling that, even though the "future ahora" may be more common in some regions than others, this is simply the meaning of the word in Spanish in general.

I am from Spain where you wold think we have a more "european" time management sense. Yet it is common to say: "ahora nos vemos" or "hasta ahora" (see you now/soon) as you are leaving the room, when you know you are gonna meet the others later in the day. It if you ask someone when are they going to do this thing you asked them to do and and they reply: "ahora"... it actually means "when I finish what I am doing now". It is true that in a business setting and some context you might need to be more specific, but that still does not change the meaning of ahora. It is also a ok reply "ahora, cuando acabe con esto", which means--"soon, as I am done with this", or even more specific: "when is the concert going to start? Ahora en 15 minutos."

"Ahora" simply does not mean "now" as in the current instant, but in the "present", this is, the time of the events that are connected to the current activities, the things that you can "wait for", the things that will happen before they are out of your head... it is like "soon" or "soon today", but with a hint of will, of promise, of certainty or fate.

I enjoyed the article and I think that someone who's going to travel to Mexico and don't know anything about the country might find this article useful.

There are very few Americans who would reply "in a sec," or "soon," if they meant "possibly some time today, or not."

There are different words and phrases for each length of indeterminate time. That's apparently not the case with the word in the article, and that's why it's confusing without broader context.

American culture is influenced by Mexican culture, though (even if we Americans don't seem to want to admit it), so it's not surprising that Americans also have ambiguous notions of time.

Meanwhile, I'd wager that other cultures (perhaps from Europe or Asia) tend toward being more literal about how they indicate time. This article would therefore be useful to them.

Ah, ahorita, I know it well. (I'm an American living in the Mexico) When I hear this, I always assume it means never. Depends on the context of course.

In Mexico, they kind of don't ever say the word no. They would rather say: ahorita, maybe, possibly, etc. For example, they will often say, "Thank you" instead of no thank you. It can be frustrating at times, as I'm a direct gringo.

Yes, that's the thing. You don't say "no". And you don't put people into situations where they'd need to say "no".

What does this stem from? Fear of violent conflict?

Maybe, I suppose. Fear of giving offense. But it's mostly about politeness, I think. There's some of that in the US South, as well.

What would be an interesting study would be to graph the preciseness with which a culture views time and the level of advanced society they have.

Slavery to the clock may stick in the craw a bit, but cultures that took time seriously could co-ordinate groups and individuals better and get more done. The result was a higher standard of living.

Is the Japanese obsession with getting their trains precisely on time one of the reasons they were able to industrialise so quickly?

According to the book "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism", countries become hardworking and disciplined because of economic development, rather than the other way around. A long but interesting quote:

"Having toured lots of factories in a developing country, an Australian management consultant told the government officials who had invited him: “My impression as to your cheap labor was soon disillusioned when I saw your people at work. No doubt they are lowly paid, but the return is equally so; to see your men at work made me feel that you are a very satisfied easy-going race who reckon time is no object. When I spoke to some managers they informed me that it was impossible to change the habits of national heritage.”

This Australian consultant was understandably worried that the workers of the country he was visiting did not have the right work eithic. In fact, he was being quite polite. He could have been blunt and just called them lazy. No wonder the country was poor — not dirt poor, but with an income level that was less than a quarter of Australia’s.

The country in question… was Japan in 1915. It doesn’t feel quite right that someone from Australia (a nation known today for its ability to have a good time) could call the Japanese lazy. But this is how most westerners saw Japan a century ago.

In his 1903 book, Evolution of the Japanese, the American missionary Sidney Gulick observed that many Japanese “give an impression…of being lazy and utterly indifferent to the passage of time.” Gulick was no casual observer. He lived in Japan for 25 years (1888-1913), fully mastered the Japanese language, and taught in Japanese university. After his return to the US, he was known for his campaign for racial equality on behalf of Asian Americans. Nevertheless, he saw ample confirmation of the cultural stereotype of the Japanese as an “easy-going” and “emotional” people who possessed qualities like “lightness of heart, freedom from all anxiety for the future, living chiefly for the present.”

(...)

This was not just a western prejudice against eastern peoples. The British used to say similar things about the Germans. Before their economic take-off in the mid-19th century, the Germans were typically described by the British as “a dull and heavy people.” “Indolence” was a word that was frequently associated with the Germanic nature."

I wonder if the idea works now, too. Are the common perceptions of Japanese or Germans as particularly hard or intelligent workers false? Just as the Germans were thought of as indolent years ago, they are thought of as laborious today.

I've always been of the opinion that these are myths with little or cherrypicked anecdota as backup. It makes little sense to me to judge millions of people like that.

Too lazy to search for the exact reference but I remember reading a book by famed French medievalist Jacques le Goff (I think it was "Pour un autre Moyen Âge") where he tells the story of how clocks first showed up in city center towers in and around Northern France and Flanders, around the 1300s, as a mean of "regulating" the activity of city-dwellers who were now working as laborers in the newly created "industrial" manufactures (the Medieval Period came with its own industrial revolution). That area of the world has remained one of the most developed in the world well into the 20th century.

How do you measure the level of advanced society?

Whatever makes you feel better about yourself, obviously /s

As a general rule of thumb I discount all editorials that start with an unverifiable personal anecdote. They are just too easy to fake and having worked in journalism I can see right through it. Have a piece on illegal immigration? Sure, why not open with the conversation you had with you illegal garder. Legislation on new driving laws, why not harken back to a conveniently apropos story about the nun that honked at you while sitting at a stop light two years ago. These things became the laughing stock of our newsroom. We even had a name for them, "sure it dids".

Also known as Friedman's taxi driver...

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/all-new...

Google apparently helps check this one out.

http://blogs.transparent.com/spanish/the-meaning-of-ahorita/

http://gringationcancun.com/2011/07/06/how-to-speak-like-a-m...

But both of those articles also start with "When I ..."

Why the hell does it matter if the author actually waited for ice cream? Seems like a terrible reason to discount the entire thing.

Haha, or famously, David Brooks' high-school educated friend who is confused by sandwiches

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruinin...

This reminds me that it wasn't until recently that I realised that in English, the word "next" when applied to recurring days of the week in English does NOT mean the nearest chronological occurrence of that day. It means the one AFTER it.

So, if a friend says to you on Wednesday that they'll meet you "next Friday" that means Friday AFTER the coming one.

Hmm, I'm not sure it's that simple! This is how I think it goes:

(en-gb) "Next Friday" is not "the next" (which is called "this Friday" if its the same week). If the next Friday occurs in the next week then people will say "this Friday coming" to specify that they don't mean the Friday that's just gone.

"Next Friday" seems to mean "Friday of the next week", so it can either be the next chronological Friday or the next-but-one.

A sentence like "This Friday Jules and me were going to go to the cinema but something came up." could be said of a past situation - if said on Saturday or Sunday.

Similarly "Next Friday Jules and me were going to go to the cinema but something came up." could be said of the following week - so it's the next Friday on Saturday/Sunday but the next-but-one any other day.

There are seemingly geographic differences in the UK as to which "next" is intended IME.

"Friday coming" is always the next Friday chronologically.

There are similar problems with, for example, "last Friday", especially if it was yesterday most people will think you mean "the Friday of last week".

That's exactly why we say oxt:

http://oxtweekend.com/

> This reminds me that it wasn't until recently that I realised that in English, the word "next" when applied to recurring days of the week in English does NOT mean the nearest chronological occurrence of that day. It means the one AFTER it.

Most commonly, IME, “next Wednesday” in the US it means the one in the next calendar week, which can be either the nearest future occurence or the one after that depending on the current day of the week, “this Wednesday” means the one in the current calendar week (future or past), and “this coming Wednesday” means the next chronological occurrence regardless of calendar weeks.

Yup. Or the idiomatic forms "Tuesday next" (not the most imminent Tuesday, the one after that) and "Monday week" (one week after the most imminent Monday).

Frankly I hate them and always request a date for clarification!

My wife speaks differently (to her, "next" is chronologically next; as in less than 7 days hence). She is the only person I've ever known to speak so, though our backgrounds are not very different. We are both too stubborn to adopt the other's usage, thus we've learned to circumlocute to avoid miscommunication.

The same confusion is going on in the German language. Instead of next, 'nächsten' the confusion is tried to be solved using 'diesen' (this), 'kommenden' (upcoming) or 'nächsten' (next) causing its own set of ambiguities.

It's the same in German, "nächster Freitag" means the one after this one.

That's because "next", and "this" refers not to the day but to the week.

It's the same in some latin languages as well and I think it makes sense, you are already naming the day with "Friday" if you are going to give some more information it should be about some other time measurement - in this case, the week - or it would just be superfluous information.

But if it's Thursday, and you say "next Wednesday", you don't mean "in six days", you mean in thirteen.

No, I would mean six days, not 13. Guess it's ambiguous between different people but I always understood it like the GP explained.

How about "let's meet this Wednesday" then?

To me "this Wednesday" has already passed in your example and people don't normally make appointments for the past.

Not really, not in English and not in Spanish or Portuguese.

"Next Wednesday" means "Next week's Wednesday" in all cases. It's not ambiguous.

Huh, interesting. In Greek, we say "(this) Wednesday" (whichever one comes next), and "next Wednesday" (the one that comes after the next one). Weeks don't factor into it at all.

In my experience, if you're hearing "ahorita" a lot, you probably ought to chill.

What's missing from this story is a translation of ahorita in the context of the ice-cream seller that would make sense to English speakers.

How about, "The chocolate ice cream will arrive eventually"? Would that be an context-correct translation of what the ice cream guy was saying?

The entire article was literally dedicated to answering that question. The whole point is that it's hard to translate.

If it was devoted to answering the question, it did a really poor job at it. It basically said "this is a word that doesn't have a direct translation, oh how odd Mexican culture is".

Nothing about whether it's closer to "soon", "any minute now", "in a bit", "at some point", "anon", or any of the other time-indeterminate phrases.

The article clearly stated that it meant all of those things, and whichever meaning is intended for any particular utterance is denoted by both context and tone.

I had no problem understanding the article and came away more informed than confused. Maybe slow down more when you read?

> meaning is denoted by both context and tone

The article did give an example of context and tone -- a friendly ice cream vendor on the street -- but it didn't give the English translation for that context.

I'm just not satisfied by an explanation as clumsy as "oh those wacky Mexicans, it means all of the things". Maybe be more critical when you read?

> The entire article was literally dedicated to answering that question.

No, as made clear by the concluding paragraphs, it's dedicated to painting a vague picture of Mexicans’ attitudes toward time to support a thesis about the transformative effect immersion in that cultures attitudes on the subject can have on tightly-woubd British people (the author in particular, but by extension his intended audience.)

It's a common use of exotic foreign cultures in writing.

> What's missing from this story is a translation of ahorita in the context of the ice-cream seller that would make sense to English speakers.

That's because it's not a story about meaning if words, it's a story of the transformation of the civilized white guy by immersing himself (as much as he can, given his oh-so-civilized upbringing) in the ways of the Noble Savage. The idea that any of the used in context have a simple meaning that could be explained to anyone not themselves completely steeped in the culture, though true, would undermine the narrative the author was trying to construct.

I think a more natural and faithful translation is "soon".

South Africans:

http://www.joburgexpat.com/2011/02/just-now-or-now-now.html?...

Culture is a beautiful thing.

If I had a dollar for every time "Ek sal kom nou nou" turned into an hour or more, I'd be retired in Camps Bay.

Emphasis on "dollar"! :-)

You could say the same of English.

- "Maybe later" -> no / never

- "Let me think about it" -> no

- "You should receive an e-mail couple of days" - we would like you to leave now. you will receive an email from donotreply@company.com

Very implicit, indirect and uncommitted.

I dispute your two phrases there. Some parents will use "maybe later", etc., to put off saying "no" but it's not everyone that does this - indirect people will.

When I visited Mexico I stayed in a hotel where I needed to ask in my broken Spanish for a towel. The hotel employee told me "ahorita te las llevan" which she wrote on a piece of paper for me since I looked confused and didn't understand the response verbally.

I looked up ahorita in my dictionary which translated it as "soon", which clarified things instantly.

So I was a bit surprised that the author of this article made ahorita out to be such a complicated concept when in fact the word "soon" seems to be an apt translation, and is used in English in much the same nebulous way.

If only this poor fellow had had the same dictionary as I did he would have saved some time and frustration, but perhaps not had a good enough story to write a BBC article about.

It's not that simple though. Ahorita can also be a polite never. In English, you would almost never use "soon" for a polite never. You would say something more like "I will think about that", or "Maybe", or "we will see..". Soon would be a promise to do it at some point in the near future.

Growing up in East Africa, this reminds me a lot of our attitude towards time.

In addition, in Swahili time is relative to sunrise which further complicates things: https://youtu.be/L2mekalOTas?t=1m25s

English is not immune to these sorts of variations.

In South African English

"now": sometime maybe/immediately. This is hard to decipher.

"now-now": very soon/immediately (this usage seems less common nowadays)

"just now": at some point in the near future

In South Wales they say "I'll be there now" meaning "I'm coming soon". Though the soon can be more like "a little later". It's quite ambiguous.

If someone says "I'll be there now, in a minute, but" then they're probably coming soon, 10 or 15 minutes (but/butty is like "buddy").

A classic Wenglish phrase is "where to's by that then?" meaning "where is it?". If you can respond "[over] by er" ("by here") meaning "here" all the better.

Words can have more than one meaning based on context? Mexicans are so confusing! Nature is so wild...

in austrian-german there is "gleich" which can either mean "right now" or "i will do it when i feel like it" or "f#ck off".

I was thinking of the German "gleich" when reading this article; I remember complaining to my parents about how the word can mean anything from seconds to hours. Although I don't think I've ever seen a "gleich" that did not happen on the same day at least.

The other term would be "bald" (ahorita, soon), which means soon or never. "gleich" is a much tighter promise than "bald"

Wow, an entire article dedicated to the Mexican version of the word "soon!"

From when I worked in restaurant: when your hands are full and a customer asks for something, you tell them you'll get to it "right away." It sounds satisfying to the customer, but actually means you'll do it when you are done with whatever you're doing. This seems very much in line with "ahorita."

Interestingly this is also somehow the case with Polish.

The word for "moment" is "chwila".

When someone will come in a "chwila", it means that this will happen in some time between, say, 15 min and an hour.

"chwilka" is a diminutive which shortens the distance with the speaker and usually means "chwila" if not longer. It also implies that you ce some kind of esteem to the speaker (not much, it is above the "fuck off" esteem).

Then comes "chwileczka", diminutive of "chwilka". It is usually a shorter "chwilka" , with its mark of esteem.

This may heavily vary between regions, though.

How is that different from 'wait a minute' or 'wait a sec'?

Could be worse. Could be Danish: http://www.fyidenmark.com/danish_time.html

This is not really confusing. The English equivalent to ahorita is "Real Soon Now".

Q: When is that shipment from Amazon due to arrive?

A: Oh, real soon now.

Q: When is GIMP finally going to get CMYK support?

A: Oh, Real Soon Now.

In the same vein, a favourite anecdote of mine is about languages that don't have words for 'left, right, ahead, behind' and instead always use directions of the compass - 'north, south, east, west'.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html

Seems sort of like how we use "minute" where I'm from. Like, "I'll be there in a minute," could be any moment or five hours from now. A hot minute is more a statement that they're on their way, no indication of arrival time. It's nice

OT but when I read "ahorita regreso" it felt like I had heard it a million times but couldn't figure out why since I don't have any reason to hear Spanish that often. Then I realized... Sombra!

'Ahorita' is not used in Spain. And adding '-ita' or '-ito' to a word makes it diminutive.

"Build a clock-wall around them and make them read it for us!" -Tonald J. Drump

It's not a cultural difference, it a word that has multiple meanings, Why is this surprising?

Have you spent any time in Mexico? Not say Cancun but actual real Mexico?

Time is a HUGE cultural difference. The article is spot on. Being 2 hours late to a party is normal.

I am from Mexico.

So what did the ice cream guy mean by "ahoriiiita"?

Something like "I have no fucking clue. But hey, I'm just pushing this cart. If you want guaranteed stock, go to Walmart. And have a nice day."

tl;dr (one sentence taken from the post):

“When a Mexican says ‘ahorita’, it could mean tomorrow, in an hour, within five years or never.”

OK, so in Spanish, "ahorita" means "right now". In Mexican Spanish, it means more like "We're friends, so I hope that it'll be soon. But then we're friends, so I don't expect that you'll give me a hard time if it's not soon."

Ahorita is not used outside of Mexico, in other Spanish spoken countries, you use ahora.

Sorry but this is incorrect. I lived in Peru for 4 years and speak to my Peruvian wife in Spanish everyday, they use ahorita the exact same way they do in Mexico, Peru even uses more diminutive than Mexico, and I know it's the same in Bolivia, Chile and Colombia that I have visited. Looks like the author of this article doesn't know a lot about Latin America. I also know Puerto Rico is big on diminutive, so I'd say it's pretty much every single country in Latin America that speaks Spanish, they all use ahorita and even ahoritita this way.

I'm from Colombia and can confirm: we use "ahorita" all the time, with the exact meaning described in the article.

The article claims Mexicans are not famous for their use of diminutives. They're not where I come from. I actually recall Peruvians and Venezuelans during my travels through South America mocking me (in a friendly way) for the fact that, in their view, Colombians use diminutives all the time.

In Colombia we mock people from Santander for using diminutives all the time. Or we don't mock but we notice it a lot.

Ahorita is not used in Argentina. I am almost sure it is not used in Uruguay or Chile either.

I've never been to Argentina so you must be right, Uruguay and Argentina being similar in culture and language it's probably not used there either. Ahorita is used in Northern Chile at least where I visited but maybe that's because it used to be Peruvian land, the rest of Chile may be different.

According to the article, "ahorita" in standard Spanish is the imperative.

No, according to the article, “most Spanish speaking countries” (not “standard Spanish”, which isn't a thing) use the diminutive form “ahorita” as more immediate form of “ahora” (“right now” vs. “now”.) Which has nothing to do with (an orthogonal concern to) the imperative, which is used in issuing commands.

Then that article is wrong, because "ahorita" in Spanish is just the diminutive form of "ahora" which means "now". "Ahora" is an adverb and therefore has no imperative form, unlike verbs.

You'd never hear "ahorita" in Spain, unless someone is trying to mock Mexicans.

Thanks. I've never even visited Spain.

But then, I wonder why Google Translate gives "right now" for "ahorita". Is it used that way in any Spanish-speaking countries? Me, I just know Mexico.

And here's an hypothesis: The use of "ahorita" to mean "perhaps sometime in the indefinite future" correlates with the share of indigentes in the population. So you wouldn't see it in Costa Rica, for example, or even among Mexican criollos.

Right, not imperative. Is there an analog for adverbs?

Just like when an English speaker says "soon" then.

uhm more like "soonish" maybe? oh those Anglos and their confusing way to express time...

What a disgusting what to view other cultures.

The only confusing thing here is that this article assumes the way "we" tell time makes sense, and the way "They" tell time is confusing.

It is as if somehow everything "we" do is the one and only best way, and any other way is simple and quaint.

It's written for an audience. The way that audience tells time does make sense to us (in the audience), and other ways can be confusing to us.

There is no judgement whatsoever, and no claim that one view is more right. It is an explanation of differences.

I think you are imagining insults that were not intended, much like the author's initial misinterpretation of "ahorita".

I think the article is pretty clear that this is only confusing to outsiders. Nowhere does she say that her culture's understanding of time is superior. Instead, the article ends with her praising the superiority of the Mexican understanding of time.

>Understanding this word takes not a fluency in the language but rather a fluency in Mexican culture.

Wrong. I am native in spanish, not even near to "fluent" in "Mexican culture" and I can understand it. I think any Spanish speaker older than 5 can understand it.

Latin America has a myriad of different accents and dialects, far more than in the United States (think more of a UK kind of thing). Some say "ahorita", some don't; but everyone can understand it.

All in all, the article is pretty inaccurate.

I'm also a native Spanish speaker (not Mexican, older than 5) and, while I would imagine "ahorita" is a relaxed, and hence imprecise, version of "ahora" ("now"), I didn't know, as the article states, it could mean within five years or never. That is certainly a cultural norm and not something you can figure out.

Spanish is my native tongue and if I hear "ahorita" it means "right now" or maybe within a few minutes, but never hours or more. I was born in El Salvador (very close and similar to Mexican culture) and lived there for 17 years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com