First up, how we speak about it.
Because time is so abstract, the only way to talk about it is by using the terminology from another, more concrete domain of experience, namely that of space. For example, in Swedish, the word for future is framtid which literally means “front time”. Visualising the future as in front of us (and the past as behind us) is also very common in English. We look forward to the good times ahead and to leaving the past behind us.
Languages around the world have different spatial terms:
But for speakers of Aymara (spoken in Peru), looking ahead means looking at the past. The word for future (qhipuru) means “behind time” – so the spatial axis is reversed: the future is behind, the past is ahead. The logic in Aymara appears to be this: we can’t look into the future just like we can’t see behind us. The past is already known to us, we can see it just like anything else that appears in our field of vision, in front of us.
Mandarin Chinese employs a vertical time axis alongside a horizontal one. The word xià (down) is used to talk about future events, so when referring to “next week” a Mandarin Chinese speaker would literally say “down week”. The word shàng (up) is used to talk about the past – so “last week” becomes “up one week”. This affects the way observers perceive the spatial unfolding of the ageing process.
…they alter the way the same individual experiences the passage of time depending on the language context they are operating in. For example, Swedish and English speakers prefer to mark the duration of events by referring to physical distances – a short break, a long party. But Greek and Spanish speakers tend to mark time by referring to physical quantities – a small break, a big party. Speakers of English and Swedish see time as a horizontal line, as distance travelled. But Spanish and Greek speakers see it as quantity, as volume taking up space.
What’s interesting is when people can speak two languages that use different ways of referring to time.
But Spanish-Swedish bilinguals are flexible. When prompted with the Swedish word for duration (tid), they estimated time using line length. They were unaffected by container volume. When prompted with the Spanish word for duration (duración), they estimated time based on container volume. They were unaffected by line length. It seems that by learning a new language, you suddenly become attuned to perceptual dimensions that you weren’t aware of before.
The Indian languages I can speak all use volume to indicate time. For instance you’d say “bahut waqt” in Hindustani which transliterates to “a lot of time” unlike the English “a long time”. I learnt both languages around the same time. Perhaps as a result of this, having thought about it, I don’t have a visual perception of time, either linear or volumetric. But I have realised I’d prefer the term “a lot of time” when speaking in English to “a long time”.
Also interestingly, the words for tomorrow and yesterday in Hindustani are the same: “kal”. In Gujarati the word is also the same but always qualified: “gai kale” for yesterday and “āvati kale” for tomorrow, transliterates to ‘previous day’ and ‘next day’.