[Lexicog] Time is money?

[Hayim Sheynin]

Dear Fritz:

After reding your message it came to my mind that Germam 'morgen' also does not have the same sense of urgency like in  Arabic.
Judge  youself, contemplating on proverbial words:

Morgen morgen, nur noch heute.

Hayim Y. Sheynin

Fritz Goerling <Fritz_Goerling at sil.org> wrote:                                        
  A while ago we had a discussion on the most common nouns in the English language.
  “Time” was on top. I think that is revealing. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson considered in “Metaphors we live by” (2003)
  the metaphorical concept TIME IS MONEY as is reflected in contemporary English, analyzing the following examples:
   
  You are WASTING my time.
  The gadget will SAVE you hours.
  I don’t HAVE the time to GIVE you.
  How do you SPEND your time these days?
  That flat tire COST me an hour.
  I’ve INVESTED a lot of time in her.
  I don’t HAVE  ENOUGH time to SPARE for that.
  You’re RUNNING OUT of time.
   
  To lose, use, put aside, budget time are other expressions.
  All of them show TIME AS MONEY, TIME AS A LIMITED RESOURCE, and TIME AS A VALUABLE COMMODITY.
   
  The authors are right by saying that these conceptualizations are tied to certain Western cultures, and that there are cultures where time is none of these things or is defined differently.
   
  You might know the joke about the Mexican and the Arab. The Mexican says to the Arab, “I hear you have a word for tomorrow that’s similar to our word mañana.”
  “Yes,” replies the Arab. “Bukara. But it doesn’t have the same sense of urgency.”
   
  Well, what about strongly time-oriented nationalities like Americans, northern Europeans (Germans, Swedes)? All who have travelled know about cultural clashes in the area of different concepts of punctuality and time.
   
  What then are the implications for dictionary-making, say in a bilingual dictionary ‘English-language X//language X-English’?
  How are different concepts of time handled vice versa? In an ‘English-German//German-English’ dictionary it might be relatively easy to find equivalent or similar expressions. But how about a bililingual dictionary ‘English-language X which was just reduced to writing’ and vice versa? 
   
  Fritz Goerling
   
  
      
     
                       

       
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