Re: CHAT: "the future," sci-fi, Quecha (Le Guin)

Muke Tever wrote:
> So why *do* we see "what happened before now" as abaft us, and not
> before us?
Because languages are rarely, if ever, completely consistent in the
metaphors they use for abstractions, such as time?  For the most part we
have the time-as-a-road metaphor, but we also sometimes use the
time-as-motion metaphor, other uses of that metaphor include "come" for
an event that hasn't arrived yet ("The deadline is fast approaching",
"Coming attractions", Spanish "la semana que viene" for "next week",
Japanese "rai-", lit. "come", for "next" in rainen "next year", etc.),
and the very word "past", simply an alternate spelling of "passed".

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