Early and late

[jan San]

I wonder how you can say early or late in Toki Pona.

For example: I arrived early but my friend arrived late. How do you have to translate this?

[janKipo]

I suspect that tp life doesn't get too wound up in punctuality, since it can scarcely mention a point, and has no good idioms for "before" and "after" (except spatial analogs, which raise all sorts of problems). You can try to work something out and see what others say, or you can (always good advice in tp) divide the notion up, in this case 'mi kama. tenpo kulupu li kama. jan pona mi li kama' with sentence order reflecting implicit temporal order.

[janMato]

I wonder how you can say early or late in Toki Pona.

For example: I arrived early but my friend arrived late. How do you have to translate this?

Well first establish context: It was in the time of the Chen Sheng Wu Guang Uprising.

"Chen Sheng and Wu Guang were both army officers who were ordered to lead their bands of commoner soldiers north to participate in the defense of Yuyang. However, they were stopped halfway in Anhui province by a severe rainstorm and flooding. The harsh Qin laws stated that anyone late to show up for government jobs will be executed, regardless of the nature of the delay. Chen and Wu realized that they could never make it on time and decided to organize a band that would rebel against the government, that they would die fighting for their freedom rather than by execution."

jan "Chen Sheng" en jan "Wu Guang" li jan utala pi ma Sonko. jan lawa li toki e ni: "sina tu li kama tawa ma tomo "Yuyang". sina kama ala la sina li moli tawa pakala ni."

telo pi laso suli li anpa wawa. ona tu li tawa ala! pakala! nasin lawa pi lawa "Qin" li toki e ni : jan li kama ala tawa pali pi jan lawa la jan li moli. ona tu li ken ala kepeken e nimi pi pilin ike. ona tu li pilin e ni: ona tu li kama tawa lon tempo ike. ona tu li pilin e ni: "mi tu li wile ala moli li utala e jan lawa ike li utala tawa nasin pi pali open"

Mr "Chen Sheng" and Mr "Wu Guang" are Chinese warriors. The Emperor said this "you two will come to the city of "Yuyang". If you don't come, you will die for this mistake. The water of the great blue (sky) fell powerfully. Those two didn't go! Damn! The law of the legal system of "Qin" said this if one doest come to work for the Emperor, then one (will) die. Those two can't use words of feeling bad (can't excuse themselves). Those two feel this, those two will come at an inopportune time. Those two feel this, "Us two will not die, we will fight the (unfair) Emperor for the way of working in an open manner (freedom)"

[Man, I'm not getting much work done today IRL. I'll probably be executed for handing in my homework late.]

[janKipo]

Me neither -- but then, I don't have (nor give any more) homework .
'sina kama ala la' 'kama ala' is some sort of adverb: "ain't gonna hoppen"? probably 'kama moli' not that it makes much difference, or 'mi moli e sina' 'tan pakala ni' (but 'ike' is probably better -- it is not a disaster except to them eventually, but it is a fault). End quotes. "They two have brought (caused to come) a bad time" probably true but not quite what you want. Maybe just 'tenpo ike la ona tu li kama' but then I am not sure what exactly (or even approximately) you want to say here.

[janMato]

I was trying to avoid spatial metaphors for time, but on second thought, I still don't see what is wrong with spatial metaphors for time. Won't everything we say about abstractions that lack a base word be a metaphor?

time is space
tenpo ni la mi moku.
mi moku lon tenpo ni.

future is open, past is closed
tenpo pini la mi moku.
mi moku lon tenpo pini.
tenpo open la mi moku
mi moku lon tenpo open.

But also future is up, past is down, written is past (tenpo sitelen),

"In this sense almost all words can be shown to be metaphorical when they do not bear a physical meaning; for the original meaning of almost all words can be traced back to something physical; .... Words had to be found to express mental perceptions, abstract ideas, and complex relations, for which a primitive vocabulary did not provide; and the obvious course was to convey the new idea by means of the nearest physical parallel" H.W. Fowler
http://www.bartleby.com/116/305.html

[janKipo]

The real problem is. of course, which metaphors would tp use. Past is closed, future is coming, but which is in front and which behind (cultural differences all over the place), which up and which down (ditto), in short, which spatial metaphors to use if any. The 'pini and 'kama' may be better to extend that to start new ones, but then we need to figure out how they work. And, do we use 'pini' for "before" and 'kama' for after or vice versa ? And, to carry on the pattrern, 'awen' for "at, during"? It is just too easy to calque English in all this('lon' for example). We may end up that way, but it needs some thought.

[janMato]

The real problem is. of course, which metaphors would tp use.

Point taken. Maybe if there were some linguistic universals. Has any language relied on the metaphor time is space, but future is back and past is forward?

Another way out of the conundrum (whilst waiting for Sonja's opinion), is to temporarily establish a metaphor and then use it. We can temporarily establish novel metaphors in English. Exactly because they are novel, the interlocutor doesn't need to have a common metaphor.

life is like a box of chocolates. (This definitely is not a linguistic universal!)
pali mi en tenpo mi li sama e poki kepeken suwi pimeja pi ma Mesiko. jan li sona ala e ni: jan li kama jo e seme. Because the novel metaphor is temporarily established, I can use the linguistic convention that personal events are lumps of candy of unknown ingredients.

tempo li sama linja. open la mi kama, pini la mi moli. ....(now for subsequent sentences the metaphor is established even if we don't have any particular official ruling)

[janKipo]

Several languages have the future behind us, where we cannot yet see it and the past in front, in full view (no names come to mind at te moment, I'll dig around). There are also those that have time rolling from the future past us into the past, revealing itself, as it were, rather than rolling from the past into the future. Similar problems with up and down. And with whether time rolls past us or we are carried along with it, past something else.And all the non-spatial devices of realization of potentials or playing a role again. But temporary metaphors can get us a long way at a given occasion, pona jan Powe Kunpo o.