[ronilan]

In English awareness is gained with money - pay attention

In Hebrew awareness is gained with emotion (put heart) - שים לב

Any native speakers of other languages able to chime in? Sapir-Whorf revived?

Edit: used word awareness to clarify what is being gained.

[colechristensen]

Not the same but along these lines, from Greek, to be enthusiastic is literally to be filled with god, if you squint you can recognize the theos in there.

[dunefox]

That doesn't mean that it's "gained with money", it means that it's spent like currency.

[ronilan]

Thanks. Clarified.

Awareness is gained by that action that differs between languages.

[slowmovintarget]

Awareness is not gained with money. Awareness is gained with investment of effort. Pay and investment have older senses of work and outcome. They've come to also apply to money as a proxy for work and outcome, but the origin of the meaning is different.

It is interesting the degrees noted. In Hebrew there's the sense of investing your desire, which goes beyond effort to controlling what it is you want. People will naturally expend effort toward things they desire.

tl;dr: In English awareness is gained with effort (not money). It is a trade.

[raz32dust]

That's interesting. In the 3 Indian languages that I know, it roughly translates to "devote attention". Not so different from pay I guess, but pay is more transactional compared to devotion, and devotion to something feels more heartfelt than paying for something.

[ronilan]

Can you post the language name and then the phrase in native type?

[npsimons]

> "devote attention"

If that's a literal translation (I realize you said "rough"), "devote" connotes to me more along the lines of "devotion" such as a "devoted husband" or "devoted follower of <X> religion."

[kranner]

Which Indian languages are these?

In Hindi it is just "ध्यान देना", i.e. "giving attention".

[pesfandiar]

In Farsi, it roughly translates to "have your senses present" or "gather your senses". It implies your senses can be focused elsewhere, and you need to purposely concentrate them on the issue at hand.

[ronilan]

Can you paste the words as written in Farsi?

[pesfandiar]

حواست باشه and حواست رو جمع کن

[leftyted]

Pay does not necessarily have anything to do with money; it can mean "give" or "bestow upon".

This is what's wrong with applications of Sapir-Whorf -- it's always used to argue for evidence of some preexisting prejudice. If you really want to test it, you'd have to look at a language and make predictions about the people who speak it before meeting them.

[NicolasBeuzeboc]

In French I lend (prêter) or make (faire) attention.

[npsimons]

> In French I lend (prêter)

"Friends, Romans, countrymen: lend me your ears."

[mAritz]

In German it is gifted (as in giving a gift) - Aufmerksamkeit schenken.

[agumonkey]

I appreciate the attempt, it might even have real bearing on how people approach things (thinking materialistically vs mentally or emotionally)

but pay https://www.etymonline.com/word/pay#etymonline_v_10195

has roots before and outside of currency

[ronilan]

Maybe I should post in /r/therewasanattempt/ instead :)

To the point:

1. Obviously the meaning of words change over time.

2. If this difference in metaphors has real bearing on how people act than the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, at least in its weak form, stands. That is something worth paying attention to....

[agumonkey]

not that I'm not attacking you, I was curious about the roots of pay

now maybe "pay attention" emerged recently, that is based on the material/financial connotation, or maybe the idiom came before

[lukegru]

This is not a good analysis imo. You don't necessarily gain any new awareness by paying attention to something or someone, you gain information. Whether or not you were aware of that information beforehand, or if it is new information has little to do with paying attention except for the fact that you might become bored or uninterested if it's not new information.

And, like another poster pointed out, this information is not gained with money, the "paying" is a metaphor and the currency is your attention itself. You give your attention away for the value of receiving the information.

On top of that there isn't just 1 metaphor in English (and I suspect other languages as well) for even the word "attention". You can fix your attention to something, or direct your attention, we speak of attention spans, etc.

[kaitai]

I don't understand this statement: "You don't necessarily gain any new awareness by paying attention to something or someone, you gain information."

How does anyone gain awareness of anything, then? Surely not by ignoring it?

I'd urge you to sit in the forest for a day (or the prairie or the desert -- anyhow, in nature, away from buildings and cars and phones) and pay attention. What do you gain from doing so?

You will find you simply notice different and new things if you spend the time (again, pay/spend... interesting). Perhaps you'll be able to codify this into "information". I'd be interested to see your notes.

[ronilan]

The metaphor used by the language differ. That’s the point.

[yetihehe]

In Polish it's gathering yourself together in one place - "skup się".

[codingdave]

This felt like you were pushing a modern usage of "pay" onto an older phrase, so a quick google search of the origin of "pay attention" comes up with this --> https://english.stackexchange.com/a/388607

[kaitai]

Agree that "pay" has non-monetary meanings, which are whispered in "pay a visit" or "pay court to". But I just noticed that we say in English both "pay attention" and "spend time". Hm... paying and spending....

In Finnish, one could say "Keskity!" and since "keski" is "center" it has some idea of centering oneself? But this is more like, "Focus!" Or you could say, "kiinnittää huomiota" -- to fasten your attention?

[ronilan]

Thanks.

That would match the current German version below and makes sense as languages evolved from same tree.

[cmarschner]

In German you give (as a present) your attention to somebody: jemandem Beachtung/Aufmerksamkeit schenken.

[ubermon]

注意 literally means pour your mind 用心 can translate to use heart， like in Hebrew

[npsimons]

When the article came to the part about teachers encouraging students to be attentive, I couldn't help but think of a schoolmarm chiding a child to "attend to their lessons."

[totony]

In French it is a state of being "sois attentif" i.e. "be attentive"

[clarry]

Kiinnitä huomiota -- attach/bind/fix (some) attention. Finnish.

[ivalm]

In Russian it's more like "interact with attention"

[khorpy]

I think the more accurate variant would be "обратить внимание" which in context can be roughly translated to "turn".

[ivalm]

That's maybe closer to the root... you're right.

I guess when I initially wrote I was thinking more from the position "обращайся" which has more interact flavor and made more sense vis a vis attention.

[ronilan]

Can you post the phrase as written in Russian?