All languages I know of have four basic directions: left, right, backwards and forwards. Are there any that don’t?
Maybe you could have just three: forwards, backwards-left and backwards-rigth? Or more then four, maybe with distinct names for some or all of the four in-between the common ones
Largely unrelated, my son (19) described something as being W from him, as in the cardinal 4 directions W,A,S and D.
Did you question your parenting at that point?
A 19 year old is capable of a joke, you know.
No more so than normal!
The number of dimensions in space is three, and that has nothing at all to do with language. When you eliminate one of the dimensions (“up” in your example), you are left with two, and you’re describing dimensions in a plane.
The reason all languages use four words for the two dimensions is because there are two directions per dimension.
ETA: why there are three (plus one for time), and how do we know that, are very interesting questions (to me).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guugu_Yimithirr_language?wprov=sfla1
Sorta related, these people only use the cardinal directions, north, east, south, west. No left or right
Still four directions, but it’s interesting that they use an absolute point of reference as opposed to the more common relative ones.
Huh, how do you say something is on the “left side” of an object then? Like “the left side of my ribs hurt”
Depending on your facing, presumably “the East side of my ribs hurt”.
Pretty much this, if I remember correctly. Because of this linguistic feature, they have an exceptionally well-developed sense of absolute direction and basically know at all times which way is which.
Bob fell out of the boat. Which side? The south side. Turn the boat 90° clockwise. He’s still off the south side of the boat.
I know there is at least one with no concept of right or left, front or back, only the fixed directions of the world like north and south.
Rimwards, hubwards, spinwards, widershins.
That’s Guugu Yimithirr, spoken by the Aboriginal Australian nation of the same name.
Yes thank you.
My mind works more like this - North is always north, I can’t give directions using right and left and have broken every dance teacher I had, all ended up saying "toward the mirror, toward the window, toward the door, etc because I can’t find right or left fast enough to dance, it moves every time I turn around, I want directions to be fixed.
Yes, I’ve heard of many. Can’t think of the names at 4am unfortunately.
My favourite was one that was basically in and out, as the centre of their island had a mountain so things were either towards or away from it.
Perhaps it’s Manam? Their island has a volcano, but they use a land-sea axis for directions:
Manam, like most Oceanic languages, primarily uses an absolute reference directional system, even on a local scale, (as opposed to many European languages which primarily use relative reference systems). This system is oriented on a land-sea axis. However, Manam’s system is unique because it has taken on a circular nature, becoming intrinsically linked to the geography of the island which is almost perfectly circular. Below are the directional terms associated in Manam:
llau ‘toward the sea’
Auta ‘toward the land’
Ata ‘to one’s right when one is facing the sea’
Awa ‘to one’s left when one is facing the sea’
The Wikipedia article doesn’t specifically phrase it as “towards/away from the volcano” , but Reddit posts linking to the Wikipedia article phrase it like that.
I heard of this before, too, and they also used clockwise and counterclockwise then. So, in effect just a polar coordinate system.
But yeah, also having a hard time finding out which concrete island that was…