My north is your left

[merriehaskell]

I'm reading this article (recommended by my old linguistics prof on Facebook--man, the world is different than it once was), and there's a whole bit about Guugu Yimithirr--a language that, when it was discovered by linguists, turned all their assumptions about language on end. Particularly, Guugu Yimithirr doesn't have "behind" and "in front of"

Comments

[dsgood]

1) Relatively recently, I realized that most of my thinking isn't in words. It's largely in kinesthetic/tactile diagrams.

2) The first city I lived in was NYC, specifically Manhattan. There, uptown is north and downtown is south. I now live in Minneapolis, where 1) Uptown is north of Downtown and 2) there are no such directions as uptown and downtown. I've taken to carrying a compass with me.

3) Visually, I can get confused between left and right. However, I can feel left from right easily. I found this out while being a passenger in a sports car in London -- kept feeling the car turning in the wrong direction.

[nancyfulda]

People in Utah tend to navigate by geographic direction, perhaps because the mountains provide a constant locational reference.

Drove me crazy sometimes, because I was most definitely NOT born with an internal compass. Left/Right, now that I get.