THE CONCEPT OF TIME AND ITS EXPRESSION IN THE TANDROY DIALECT OF MALAGASY

Abstract

This paper investigates the Tandroy concept of time, focusing on their ways of recognizing time. The Tandroy language is a Malagasy dialect, spoken in the southern part of Madagascar, that belongs to the Austronesian family. The Tandroy live in a non-literate society that traditionally puts little value on written materials. They educate their children, inherit their traditions, and impart their wisdom through oral traditions passed down from generation to generation. My research on the Tandroy reveals that its speakers keep track of time according to natural phenomena such as diurnal rotation, animal behaviors, agricultural cycles, and the daily routines of their society. For example, Mihilaña andro, which literally means ‘The sun declines’, indicates approximately one o’clock in the afternoon, and such expressions, used in conversation when talking about time, can be found for all the hours of the day, corresponding roughly to the 24 hours as counted in modern time. This way of conceiving of and expressing time is used in everyday life and also appears in their folktales.