It’s remarkable how many clues you can get about a culture just by the way the language works. There are a few interesting differences between English and Nepali that I’ve noticed along the way, and they seem to speak volumes about the contrasts in overall attitudes / ways of looking at the daily events of life. It’s hard for me to guess which came first. Whether the attitudes came first and created the language, or whether the way the language was created has influenced the attitudes of the people over time. Either way, I find it very interesting to see how subtle variances in the way words are used and sentences are put together can relate to the general perspective of a population. In Nepal, I notice the difference especially when it comes to the sense of control or responsibility people feel in various situations, and it seems to me to have a fairly significant impact on how people perceive and interact with their world.
Some examples are probably necessary, as much of that may only make sense in my own head. For one thing, in Nepali, there is no future tense. There is only past and present tense. To imply that you’re speaking of future events, usually the best way to do it is to use present tense but then add the word “holaa” in there somewhere. Holaa means might, maybe or perhaps in English, and when I think about the culture here, this does indeed seem to be the only sensible way of talking about the future. It would be ridiculous to say something like “I will take the bus to the vegetable market tomorrow and buy some peas”. The word “will” implies just a little bit too much certainty that a) the bus will be running tomorrow, b) the vegetable market will be open, c) peas will be available if or when you get there, and d) someone won’t drop by for tea and cause you to drop all other plans. Instead, in Nepali, the sentence would be spoken something like “I might take the bus to the vegetable market, perhaps tomorrow, and maybe buy some peas”. In the West, we seem to feel a lot more comfortable stating our intentions to do things as actual facts. Here, people are a little more hesitant to commit to doing things any more than 5 minutes in advance. There isn’t the same feeling of control over situations.
Another example is one I come across constantly in the classroom. It has to do with the responsibility people feel for knowing things. In English, knowledge seems to be held in a much more active way. We’ll say things like “I know how to do this” or “I don’t know what the answer is”, but always the word “I” is present, implying that whether something is known or not, it is entirely up to ourselves. In Nepali, the response is either “aunchha” or “aundaina”. “It comes” or “it doesn’t come”, referring to the knowledge. It feels a lot more passive. Even the way the students say “aundaina” seems to be not at all in a guilty way as if they’re being asked something they’re supposed to know but don’t (which usually is the case). But instead it’s said in a helpless, shrug-of-the-shoulders, throw-up-the-arms sort of way, like: “what to do, Teach? The knowledge just ain’t comin”. It gives the sense that knowing something or not knowing something is completely out of a person’s control. Almost like it’s someone else’s responsibility to bring the knowledge to them, rather than their responsibility to actively acquire the knowledge themselves (or at least retain and reproduce it). This passive verb use appears in many other situations too. Such as, “it happened” in Nepali vs. “I did it” in English, or “it felt” vs. “I feel”.
The Nepali language has adopted a number of English words, however. Mostly anything that has been brought in from outside the country or is a particularly foreign concept to them. So for things like “computers”, “internet”, “mobile phones” etc., naturally the English words are used. And then also for strange concepts like “planning” and “schedules” there seems to be no Nepali equivalent, so the English words are always used.
There’s also a whole lot less emphasis on being able to place events on a timeline. This particularly took me a long time to get used to. In the beginning, I was constantly trying to nail down exactly when something took place, particularly in relation to other events, but this is proved virtually impossible to do, so I eventually gave in and stopped trying. There is a word in Nepali, “asti”, that could mean anything from 2 days ago to thousands of years ago. This is commonly used when talking about the past instead of the placers that I’m used to, such as, “last Tuesday” or “when I was in grade 7” or some other useful indication of what point in time is being talked about. If not “asti” then usually the phrase “that time” is used, not specifying which time in any way, just mentioning that it was at a time that was different from now. When I’d try to ask when exactly, or clarify in any way, I’d usually receive a slightly exasperated response of “that time”. Even when I tried to be creative with my questions, by asking “had your son been born by that time?” for example (to at least narrow it down to within the last decade or not), it seemed impossible for them to see why I might want to know when, within the whole history of their lives, that particular story had taken place, so it usually still got me nowhere.
