About Time

Aymara and Quechua are spoken in the Andes mountains and highlands of South America. While many fewer people speak Aymara compared to Quechua (2.4 million to 8-12 million, respectively), both are relatively unknown to much of the world.

I love that learning about other languages and cultures always gives us new perspectives. It is like when you stand on a chair: the room is still the same room, but you notice different things about it. As we deepen our language study, we begin to notice new perspectives embedded in other languages and cultures. What is especially unique about Aymara and Quechua, is their understanding of time.

“[T]he Aymara call the future qhipa pacha/timpu, meaning back or behind time, and the past nayra pacha/timpu, meaning front time. And they gesture ahead of them when remembering things past, and backward when talking about the future.” 

“The past is known, so it lies ahead of you. (Nayra, or ‘past’, literally means eya and sight, as well as front.) The future is unknown, so it lies behind you, where you can’t see.”

Consumer Behavior (book)

In other words, everything we can see is considered the past, and therefore in front of us; everything we cannot see and is therefore unknown, is the future and behind us. This is actually very logical when you think about. Could that one unique linguistic perspective influence how we think?

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Quechua

While Quechua still has a significant number of speakers, it is actually considered an endangered language. However, the internet is helping to popularize and revitalize Quechua (along with other endangered languages), so that more people learn to speak it.

Renata Flores, for example, sang a Michael Jackson song in Quechua to help her native language become more popular, and the video went viral. If you’ve never heard Quechua before, I recommend listening!