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Comment by foxfired | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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"?

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

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

Yestermorrow

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.]

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!

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.

> 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.

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