Quote:
Originally Posted by ardeegee
"Instead of words like "right," "left," "forward," and "back," which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer, the Kuuk Thaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms — north, south, east, and west — to define space. This is done at all scales, which means you have to say things like "There's an ant on your southeast leg" or "Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit." One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is "Where are you going?" and the answer should be something like " Southsoutheast, in the middle distance." If you don't know which way you're facing, you can't even get past "Hello.""
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Wow, good thing for me I was born in France. If I was a Kuuk Thaayorre, I'd be a mute
That said, it's dangerous to jump to conclusions about what concepts a culture has or doesn't have, based on language.
In Japanese, the words for "you" and "me" are recent constructions. I think they were introduced as a consequence of contact with Westerners who couldn't "get" that a language has no word for "I".
Does this means that the Japanese have no undestanding of the concept of self? Obviously not, although it can probably be linked to the way the Japanese see the individual as mostly members of society, and defined by their status in society. In the Genji monogatari, characters are identified by their position at Court, so one character can be called different names as the novel progresses and their position changes.
Language Log has a lot of posts about the myths on a given language having "
N words for X" or "no word for Y". Most of these statements are factually incorrect, and what if they were indeed correct? It wouldn't mean much in itself
I will leave you on this thought: