African languages & abstract concepts

I doubt that past possibilities (eg would have) do not exist, given how distinct the feeling of regret is, and how it ties into past possibilities and the how you would change your actions.
Future hypotheticals would need to exist in usage, as they are fundamental to planning, which is a basic aspect of hunting and human interaction.

>>9024042
First of all when people say their languages "don't have past tense" or whatever, they don't mean that their language doesn't have a way of expressing those concepts. You have to realize that in linguistics "tense" means something different than in everyday conversation. It refers to morphological marking, not just reference to the past. In that sense, English doesn't have future tense. We have past and present tense marking on our verbs, but no future tense. We express future tense in other ways, such as with the auxiliary "will."

The misconception that certain languages don't have a way of expressing the concept "past" essentially stems from irresponsible or ignorant reporting.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-13452711
That's about an Amazon tribe but yeah seems to be true.
Think it's more likely unnecessary for tribal life than inability to grasp the concepts.

>>9024170
Nice, time to go back and tell this to my friends of /pol/

>>9024170
>"has no word for 'time'"
This is no way suggests that they don't understand or use the concept of abstract time. We don't have words in English for tons of things that other languages have. Does that mean we can't grasp the concepts or use them frequently? Absolutely not. For instance we don't have a word for "in the next three days." Does that mean that concept isn't part of our world? Does it mean we don't use the concept in daily life? NO. We just don't have a word for it, just like we don't have a word for countless other things.

OP, even Ebonics lacks those features.

"We is going to the store" rather than "we are" or "we will," etc.

Future-oriented cognition seems to have evolved among northern populations, where it was needed to survive harsh winters.

What I personally find interesting about African "languages" is they are the only languages in the world to use primitive clicks and clacks with their mouth and jaws which is a method of communication many scientists compare to bees (they communicate by performing little tap dances with each other)

>>9024972
"We is" is present tense. "Ebonics" just doesn't have the same subject-verb agreement as English. African American English actually has a quite elaborate temporal auxiliary system, including auxiliary verbs denoting near future, distant future, present, recent past, distant past, and more.

>>9024974
Only a relatively small number of African languages uses these sounds, called "clicks," actually velaric ingressive obstruents. I'd be interested to hear why you'd assign them the label "primitive"

>>9024956
>lack of the concept "in the next three days" is equivalent to not having an idea of time represented in language
Sure, Anon, sure

>>9024042
https://www.amren.com/news/2016/08/a-white-teacher-speaks-out/

>this isn't a /pol/ thread
kek

>someone linking armen
kek

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>>9024956
>no word for a random specific unit of time is the same as no word for time itself
reaching a little far there, lad

A lot of "abstract" concepts in European languages aren't really that abstract either. The word abstract itself means just "to pull something out", which is a metaphor for abstracting. Calculus was originally the act of counting something with small stones (calculii). Of course, all IE languages have words for numbers larger than 2 (though the words for larger ones are sometimes different, suggesting that they developed later).
>>9024972
I'm no expert, but "we will" sounds like a recent development, too. Middle English?

>>9024999
only black people speak them -> black people look like monkeys -> monkeys are inferior to humans -> black people are inferior to humans

>>9025171
>implying Capoids aren't white

>>9024042
SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS IS NOT TRUE AND CAN NEVER BE TRUE. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. DO NOT BE RACIST ABOUT THIS.

LANGUAGES MAY BE A MEDIUM OF INFORMATION, THE GRAMMARS/STRUCTURES OF SOME LANGUAGES MAY BE PREDISPOSED TO CONVEYING SOME TYPES OF INFORMATION MORE EASILY THAN OTHER LANGUAGES, THOSE SAME STRUCTURES MAY HAVE COGNITIVE LIMITS THANKS TO THE COMPLEXITY OF HANDLING THEM DURING USE, AND INFORMATION MAY STIMULATE A BUTTERFLY EFFECT OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT... BUT DON'T LET THAT FOOL YOU INTO TAKING A RACIST PATH.

/POL/TARDS GET OUT OF HERE.

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>>9024974
Clicks seem to be a consequence of enormous phoneme registers than anything else. All languages with click consonants tend to have over 50 consonants.

>>9025184
>the research suggests that language originated in Africa
I hope that's something the retarded shitlib journalist made up in his brainlet head. Because that's an extremely bold and ambitious statement. The one that somehow seems to appear whenever a journalist reads a paper he doesn't understand at all.

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>>9025050
>>9025180
>hear a claim
>ask about it on a board most likely to know about it
>"RREEEEEE GET OUT"

Fuck you. Maybe OP should just LISTEN AND BELIEVE, right?