搜索 英语 老师
박희섭(Heesob Park)
Why "कल" means both "tomorrow" and "yesterday"?
What is the reason of using the same word "कल" for tomorrow and yesterday in Hindi?
For example, I cannot know कल means tomorrow and yesterday until I see the last verb's tense in the following sentences.
कल शाम को मैं बाज़ार गया। (कल = yesterday)
आप कल सभा में दस मिनट बोलेंगी ? ( कल = tomorrow)
2016年12月14日 02:26
回答 · 3
2
It's a good question, but even as a native I have found no definitive answers. Perhaps the only answer is the way Indians have traditionally perceived time. Time is a continuum that keeps going in infinite cycles, the "ahorātri" of Brahma. Yesterday determines today and tomorrow and tomorrow will define a future "yesterday" in the cycle. The word therefore remains the same, but the associated verb tense changes. Other related languages like Bengali do make a formal distinction, though. Yesterday is "gatakāl" (past kal) and tomorrow is āgāmikāl" (future kal), but even Bengali does not distinguish this in informal speech and usage.
2016年12月14日
"Kal" means "one day away from today," but you can differentiate between the two via tense. For example "Kal main khaayaa thaa" = "Yesterday I had eaten" vs. "Kal main khaaroongaa" = "Tomorrow I will eat"
2018年8月21日
Quoted from https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-word-for-tomorrow-and-yesterday-kal-the-same-in-Hindi-Urdu
See it like this: कल doesn't mean "yesterday" and "tomorrow", it actually means "one day away from today", not stating exactly when. This "one day away from today" is not used in English, so we replace it by the two words we usually use.
2016年12月14日
还未找到你的答案吗?
把你的问题写下来,让母语人士来帮助你!
박희섭(Heesob Park)
语言技能
英语, 芬兰语, 意大利语, 韩语, 挪威语, 波斯语, 俄语, 瑞典语, 越南语
学习语言
挪威语
你或许会喜欢的文章

The Power of Storytelling in Business Communication
45 赞 · 11 评论

Back-to-School English: 15 Must-Know Phrases for the Classroom
33 赞 · 6 评论

Ten Tourist towns in Portugal that nobody remembers
63 赞 · 23 评论
更多文章