# Quote — Peter Farb, Word Play

> Whorf asked... Do the Hopi and European cultures... conceptualize reality in different ways? And his answer was that they do. Whereas European cultures are organized in terms of space and time, the Hopi culture, Whorf believed, emphasizes events. To speakers of European languages, time is a commodity that occurs between fixed points and can be measured. Time is said to be wasted or saved... their economic systems emphasize wages paid for the amount of time worked, rent for the time a dwelling is occupied, interest for the time money is loaned. Hopi culture... instead thinks... The span of time the growing takes is not the important thing, but rather the way in which the event of growth follows the event of planting. The Hopi is concerned that the sequence of events in the construction of a building be in the correct order, not that it takes a certain amount of time to complete the job.

- Author: [Peter Farb](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb.md)
- Book: [Word Play](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb/word-play.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Farb#Word_Play_(1974)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb/word-play/whorf-asked-do-the

## More from this book

> Each language encourages its speakers to tell certain things and to ignore other things.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb/word-play/each-language-encourages.md)

> Experiments... have shown that at least one aspect of human thought—memory—is strongly influenced by language.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb/word-play/experiments-have-shown.md)

> Wilhelm von Humboldt... stated that the structure of language expresses the inner life of its speakers: "Man lives with the world about him, principally, indeed exclusively, as language presents it."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb/word-play/wilhelm-von-humboldt.md)