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3 - Multidimensional worlds

Number, time, and space as linguistic systems of symbolic relationships

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Aneta Pavlenko
Affiliation:
Temple University, Philadelphia
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Summary

Numbers were a mystery to me. I was so far behind. It was only in Nairobi, at age ten, that I figured out anything at all about the way time is calculated: minutes, hours, years. In Saudi Arabia the calendar had been Islamic, based on lunar months; Ethiopia maintained an ancient solar calendar. The year was written 1399 in Saudi Arabia, 1972 in Ethiopia, and 1980 in Kenya and everywhere else. In Ethiopia we even had a different clock: sunrise was called one o’clock and noon was called six. (Even within Kenya, people used two systems for telling time, the British and the Swahili). The months, the days – everything was conceived differently. Only in Juja Road Primary School did I begin to figure out what people meant when they referred to precise dates and times.

Ali, 2007: 63

Born in Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2007) grew up with a grandmother who “never learned to tell time at all. All her life, noon was when shadows were short, and your age was measured by rainy seasons. She got by perfectly well with her system” (p. 63). Ali’s (2007) poignant memoir Infidel: My Life traces the transformation of a girl from Mogadishu into a member of the Dutch Parliament, a writer, a political activist, and a spokesperson for the rights of women against militant Islam. Her transition from the world of shadows and rainy seasons to the world we live in, where every second is measured and imbued with significance, is only a small part of the overall account but I find it very touching. It reminds me of my own significantly less dramatic yet still destabilizing transition from the metric system and the Celsius scale to the ever-confusing inches, miles, pounds, gallons, and degrees in Fahrenheit. Today, I know exactly how many pounds I need to lose but I still don’t automatically convert miles into mental distances nor do I use the weather forecast to decide if I should put my coat on to go out. Instead of letting Fahrenheit degrees speak to me, I still look out the window.

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The Bilingual Mind
And What it Tells Us about Language and Thought
, pp. 84 - 125
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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  • Multidimensional worlds
  • Aneta Pavlenko, Temple University, Philadelphia
  • Book: The Bilingual Mind
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139021456.004
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  • Multidimensional worlds
  • Aneta Pavlenko, Temple University, Philadelphia
  • Book: The Bilingual Mind
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139021456.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Multidimensional worlds
  • Aneta Pavlenko, Temple University, Philadelphia
  • Book: The Bilingual Mind
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139021456.004
Available formats
×