• Linguistic Determinism: The way we think, the way we categorize, compartmentalize, and compare information is determined by the patterns of our primary language. This can be seen by observing differences in patterns between languages of different families. This is also known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. (Whorf 191-192)

People of the Hopi tribe, according to Whorf on page 192, exhibit no sense of time as a linear, flowing concept. This is seen in the Hopi language as well, as “the Hopi language contains no reference to ‘time,’ either explicit or implicit”. Hopi language has a metaphysical system of its own, unrelated to the time-vs.-space model and general relativity models we use. Whorf aims to make the Hopi metaphysical system understandable to the audience through English language approximation. (Whorf 192)

According to Whorf on page 193, the English conception of metaphysics is divided into Time and Space, and time is further broken down into three subcategories: Past, Present, and Future.

On the other hand, the conception of metaphysics in the Hopi language is divided into Manifest (Objective) and Manifesting (Subjective).

• Manifest includes, to use English approximation, both the present and past (with no real delineation between them) and everything experienced by our senses.
• Manifesting includes not only the future, but everything that exists only in the heart (in our minds, to use English approximation).

The Manifesting includes an element of what Whorf refers to on page 193 as the “mystical”, comparing it slightly to the more cosmic beliefs of occult groups in English speaking countries. He does not do this with the intention of creating a negative connotation.

Building off of the last section, this manifesting is not only in the hearts of the Hopi people, but in the hearts of everything physical, whether the thing is conscious by English standards or not. It is, in some ways, preordained, and in some ways not guaranteed (Whorf 193-4).

Unlike in English, where this future is arriving to us from some predestined linear point, the manifesting of Hopi language is something which is springing out from the collective of hearts with dynamic pacing, with nonlinear, seemingly random (though not really so) staggered pacing (Whorf 194).

The manifesting is always in the process of becoming, but the process vs. the full existing of the becoming is not a distinction in the Hopi language. These are one in the same. Due to this, part of what we in English would call the ‘present’ is wrapped up in the manifesting (Whorf 194).

Like this sharing of present between the manifesting and the manifested, there is a moment shared of the beginning point between these two. “There is also a verb form, the inceptive which refers to this edge of emergent manifestation in the reverse way—as belonging to the objective, as the edge at which objectivity is attained; this is used to indicate beginning or starting, and in most cases there is no difference apparent in the translation from the similar use of the expective” (Whorf 194).

As a symptom of this shared connection, the suffix to start and to stop (in English equivalent) is the same in the Hopi language.

The emphasis on becoming and manifesting being done through a form of action as motion leads to most cosmological words in the Hopi language being verbs, rather than nouns like in English (Whorf 195).

On this relationship, Whorf says the following on page 195: “From each subjective axis, which may be thought of as more or less vertical and like the growth-axis of a plant, extends the objective realm in every physical direction, though these directions are typified more especially by the horizontal plane and its four cardinal points. The objective is the great cosmic form of extension; it takes in all the strictly extensional aspects of existence, and it includes all intervals and distances, all seriations and number”.

Whorf states on page 196 that due to the shared realm of space and time in the manifested (objective), this leads to a connection between the two ideas, where something cannot happen in the present unless it happens here. Likewise, something cannot happen somewhere else unless it happens in the past (Again, using English approximates to make the concept better understood). What we reach then is a borderland where at some point, we get so far away from us that we run out of time to have physical domain for (Whorf 195-196).

On proposing the borderland of the Hopi language, Whorf says the following on page 196: “As the objective realm displaying its characteristic attribute of extension stretches away from the observer toward that unfathomable remoteness which is both far away in space and long past in time, there comes a point where extension in detail ceases to be knowable and is lost in the vast distance, and where the subjective, creeping behind the scenes as it were, merges into the objective, so that at this inconceivable distance from the observer—from all observers—there is an all-encircling end and beginning of things where it might be said that existence, itself, swallows up the objective and the subjective”.

This borderland is one in which the Hopi language switches to only speaking in the manifesting (subjective). This is the language used for events long ago, as of those of Myth, and for things very far away, as of Stars, other galaxies, etc. (Whorf 196)

A specific warning from Whorf on page 196 about avoiding misunderstanding on this topic: “So the dim past of myths is that corresponding distance on earth (rather than in the heavens) which is reached subjectively as myth through the vertical axis of reality via the pole of the nadir— hence it is placed below the present surface of the earth, though this does not mean that the nadir-land of the origin myths is a hole or cavern as we should understand it. It is Palatkwapi 'At the Red Mountains,' a land like our present earth, but to which our earth bears the relation of a distant sky—and similarly the sky of our earth is penetrated by the heroes of tales, who find another earthlike realm above it.”