Aymara's time metaphor reversed? Yahgan says....

[Ellen L. Contini-Morava]

I seem to recall that Clifford Hill said something like this about Hausa 
back in the 1970's.  His work was mainly on spatial orientation:  an 
English speaker viewing two objects in a line, one closer and one farther 
away, will say the farther one is "behind" the nearer one, as if the 
intervening object were "facing" the viewer, whereas Hausa speakers say the 
farther one is "in front of" the nearer one, as if the viewer and the 
objects were standing in a queue all facing in the same direction.  I think 
he also said that Hausa speakers describe the past as "in front" and the 
future as "behind", on the grounds that one can see/know the past whereas 
one doesn't see/know the future.

Ellen C-M

--On Wednesday, June 14, 2006 11:53 AM -0400 jess tauber 
<phonosemantics at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Apparently Aymara is the only (so far) documented language whose speakers
> view the past as being ahead and the future behind. The terms NAYRA 'eye,
> front, sight' is grammaticalized to mean 'past', while QHIPA 'back,
> behind' is used for 'future'.