The weather in Spain is very predictable. Not just what weather there will be, but when it will happen. Last year, on September 10th I wrote about the first torrential rains of the autumn. This year, I received an email on September 13th including the phrase, “Greetings from stormy Madrid.”
As you can infer from the photo, a lot of the rain in Spain has fallen in my back garden. Whether the rains will last long enough to do much good remains to be seen, but, for the moment at least, I don’t need to do any watering.
We’re all used to the idea that time is money. But there are languages in which time is weather.
In English it’s common enough to ask a friend after his holiday “Did you have a good time?” or, alternatively, “Did you have good weather?” There’s no confusion between the two ideas, although the weather may have influenced the degree of enjoyment. Similarly in Welsh, the word for time, amser, can be used to say “I had a good time” (Rydw i wedi cael amser da) while a separate word, tywydd, is used for weather.
In French, however, the word temps serves for both time and weather, as does the word tiempo in Spanish.
If you ask a Spaniard the English question “Did you have a good time?” he is very likely to say “Yes, it was sunny,” or “No, it rained,” without realising he is answering something quite different. The expression “to have a good time” would be translated as pasarlo bien or divertirse – to enjoy oneself.
To ask “What time is it?”, the French and Spanish use the idea of hour: “Quelle heure est-il?” and “¿Qué hora es?” respectively. To ask “How many times?” a diffent word is used: “Combien de fois” in French, and “¿Cuántas veces?” in Spanish.
It seems, then, that English and Welsh have a similar concept of time and weather, and French and Spanish a different one.
But these are not the only possibilities. Swedish, for example, has three separate words to cover the ideas of time, weather, and (how many) times. To ask what time it is, you have to ask what the clock shows; nor can you use the expression “to have a good time” – you need to say “to enjoy yourself”.
Both time and weather are basic concepts for all peoples; it is interesting to see how different our ways of referring to them are.
don't confuse the narrator 