What are attitudes about time in the culture(s) you are studying? Are these attitudes reflected in the language?
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What are attitudes about time in the culture(s) you are studying? Are these attitudes reflected in the language?
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As our learning partner, Sezgi, put it, "Unfortunately people are not strict when it comes to time. We are generally late - which is bad." I found this a bit comical because the way that she phrased it, it sounds like Turks know that being timely is not a priority for them. This could prove problematic if Turks spend time or live abroad, like in a big city in the United States such as New York, where time is everything and being 5 minutes early is considered on time. Turkish culture is polychronic with respect to time orientation. In that way, multitasking and juggling conversations and tasks is essential to a successful worker. In business settings, however, punctuality is important and expected. The emphasis regarding punctuality is mixed - more important in urban than rural areas.
I would say yes, these attitudes are reflected in the language. It is a more laid back language with focus on effective communication, rather than elaboration and detail found in languages such as English.
In the Korean society, work is the most important thing in life as shown through some of the cultural presentations. Students intensively work in High School and College to be able to enter in the few business conglomerate companies, such as Samsung. Adults work overtime most of the time and students study minimum 12 hours a day. Students, too, work very hard to get good grades and good SAT scores to get into top universities. In fact, being late in Korea is extremely disrespectful and late Koreans can be ashamed, especially when being late to someone superior or older. For this reason, the pressure to be on time is always present and it will be extremely rare to see a Korean late to an appointment. This culture can be seen in many aspect of the Korean life. For example, restaurants have a call button at each table so that patrons can summon the wait staff at a moment’s notice.
Korea has a monochronic behavior and viewpoints about time. Punctuality is important in South Korea and being on time is enforced at an early age. When I attended elementary school in Korea, the school bell would ring five minutes before classes began, and everyone would hurry to class. Many teachers would punish students, even physically, if they were late to class. Some schools closed and locked the front entrance gates as soon as the bell rang for first period. Punctuality is an important concept in Korean society, especially in terms of customer service. For example, food delivery service is free and extremely fast in Korea, and many restaurants are open 24/7 or until 2-3am. If delivery takes longer than expected, many restaurants offer a discount, free meal, or an additional service of some sort.
Traditionally, Korean people have a relaxed attitude about time. It is a norm that people are few minutes late to an informal social event or meet with friends, sometimes being late for an hour is not considered to be a problem. Even when they refer to an exact time, it sometimes is still an indication of a vague time frame. However, such custom is gradually changing as people become more westernized and the pace of living is getting faster. People are expected to meet their deadlines and arrive on time to meetings at work. It is considered unprofessional if one came late. For children, it is important to turn in homework on time, too.
The attitude about time in Turkish culture is flexible. It is polychronic so that people are not strict when it comes to time. People are usually late and it is tolerable. It is therefore common in a Turkish business environment for phone calls to be taken during scheduled meeting. People usually enter the meeting room without invitation. Business meetings tend not to follow a linear system and are rarely structured. As a result, it is necessary for people to exercise patience when conducting business in Turkey.
I think the attitudes about time in Korea really depend on different individuals because the Korean friends I met all have different attitudes about time. However, for most of them, being late for the dates seem very usual. For example, if my friend and I set a time for meeting up at 5 pm, in Taiwan many Taiwanese will show up 5 minutes earlier, like around 4:55; however, for the Korean friends, most of them will show up 10 minutes later around 5:10 or even more. That's one of the attitudes they have about time. Also, besides being late, they might cancel the meeting up plan in the morning of that day. Most of them will say that there is something happen suddenly, so they cannot make it, and we have to reschedule it again. And because this happened to me not just for one Korean friend of mine, but around 4 of them have this kind of "habit". I don't know if this is part of their cultures or just because of their different personalities, but now whenever I want to meet a Korean friend, I will always prepare a plan b for myself.
In fact, I'm not pretty sure whether these kinds of attitudes reflected in the language or not. However, in Korean language, they often use the words " hurry up". From my personal experiences, I guess the reasons behind this, one comes from their rash personalities and another one I guess is because they are always being late, so their friends have to use the words to warn them.
Turkish people do not tend to be on time, in fact they have a reputation for being late for almost everything. At the same time, culture doesn’t represent every single person in Turkey therefore it really depends on the individual. That said, there aren’t really any attitudes that I found were reflected in the language. One example is that in busy cities like Istanbul there tends to be a lot of traffic and this leads many to make the excuse that they were late because they were stuck in traffic.
Being that Portugal is so close to Spain, Portugal has many similar attitudes towards time. They regularly take naps in the middle of the day, and have a much loser schedule in comparison to that in the America. However, for the Portuguese although they may arrive late, they do not like it when the other party arrives late. In terms of reflection in the language, I was unable to identify any.
Traditionally, Koreans had a very different perspective on time than that of the US today. In the US it is important to be on time for things and to be responsible for deadlines and meetings, and even to some extent plans with friends. While Korean culture has become more Western due to the influences of countries like the United States, in the past Koreans had a different concept of time. Being early or late to things was mostly only something that servants and workers would have to worry about. There is a strong culture of working hard in Korea and workers were encouraged and expected to be early if not on time. Meetings amongst individuals were less rigidly planned and usually did not have well defined start and end times. Meetings and conversations flowed more naturally and ended when they were over. While Korea has definitely changed in recent years due to Western influences, some aspects of this perspective on time are still present in modern society. For example, meetings between friends are often loosely planned and can run much longer than expected. As long as people are having a good time the group could be out late into the night.
Perceptions of Time in Korean and English. http://www.uab.edu/Communicationstudies/humancommunication/12_08_Le...
For central european countries, time is about living in the now. Contrast to asian or even american culture, planning and scheduling is not regularly practiced in these countries. While I was abroad, the days were very fluid; I would go to class, then on a whim, everybody would talk about where to go for lunch. Many time, a small group of friends and I would just walk down the street and find a restaurant. After that, we might go for coffee or a drink and then head our separate ways. In some cases, if there was a festival or an event going on, we would go and visit. When I am at Richmond, I like to plan several months ahead and in some areas such as class schedules, I like to plan a semester ahead. When I was abroad, everything I did I would like to be spontaneous and as I talked to more Czech people, this was normal. I think they see time as a resource that needs to be enjoyed. When we go out for drinks late at night, we cannot worry or think about the costs, only the benefits. It was difficult for me to break out of this habit as someone from Korea, "time is money" and I would often leave bars or clubs early because I knew I had something the next day. But as the semester went on, I know that the benefits of talking and growing closer with friends far outweighed the costs. Time is very important, but it is also important how you spend that time.
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