16th Lexember Word

funma|z /funmad͡z/, noun: “present, the current moment in time”

I promise that’s not what made me publish this one 6 hours too late! It was… simply to make a relevant joke. Yeah, that’s it! No procrastination, just a joke :/.

So, as I wrote before, in Moten the metaphor of time is related to a flowing river. Basically, the present moment is an unmoving observer on the riverbank, while events go with the flow. Future events have not passed by yet, so they are upstream (and indeed, the word for “upstream”, zekjem, also means “future”), while past events have already passed by, so they are downstream (and indeed, the word for “downstream”, so|nem, also means “past”). Given this metaphor, one would expect the word for “present” to at least be related to ma|z: “riverbank”. And that’s indeed the case: funma|z is a compound of ma|z with funa: “second, moment”, and refers to the present moment, as opposed to both the past and the future.

Questions?

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1uUGxxB
via IFTTT