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How To Raise A Great Sailor

Aug 30, 2010
By .
Books, Language

Raise your child bilingual, but pick the right second language:

In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to have a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic information or understand what people around you are saying. Indeed, speakers of geographic languages seem to have an almost-superhuman sense of orientation. Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on an open plain, whether outside or indoors or even in caves, whether stationary or moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction.

By 7 years old, a child who speaks the Australian Aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr knows north from south from east from west, wherever he is, every moment of his life.  Because he uses these terms to describe the relations of objects to other objects.  He doesn't refer to his left hand.  He refers to his north hand, or his east hand, which could be either hand depending on which way he's facing.

While we don't know what languages the people who originally settled Australia and Polynesia spoke, a tongue like Guugu Yimithirr would be a positive boon to people migrating from Asia to, say, New Guinea, or even in stages to Hawaii.

On the other hand, speakers of Guugu Yimithirr, literally, don't know left from right.  And of course epic feats of navigation have been undertaken by relatively primitive people, like the Vikings, whose languages didn't require them to develop a built-in compass.

What I quoted above is just a tidbit from a longer article by Guy Deutscher, whose book "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages," will be published this month.  The article is well worth your time, and I look forward to the book.

Last 5 posts by Patrick Non-White

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8 Comments

  1. Brandon  •  Aug 30, 2010 @5:32 pm

    Definitely sounds like a great read. A quick note to others interested in reading it: a search of Amazon to add it to my wish list revealed Deutscher's book is titled 'Through the Language Glass', rather than 'Through the Looking Glass'.

  2. Imaginary Lawyer  •  Aug 30, 2010 @5:40 pm

    For an expanded version of this, I highly recommend Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction, which not only discusses directional languages, but languages where verb tense depends on the reliability of your statement – for example, "Patrick has a broken toe" would have a different verb tense depending on whether I actually saw the broken toe, saw bandages allowing me to infer a broken toe, or read about his broken toe on a blog post.

    (The Very Short Introduction series is pretty awesome overall, actually. It's like a Dummies series for people who voluntarily read and enjoy The Economist.)

  3. Brian Dunbar  •  Aug 30, 2010 @7:34 pm

    a positive boon to people migrating from Asia to, say, New Guinea, or even in stages to Hawaii

    I am hopelessly locked into a left-right-front-behind worldview, but I don't see how a guy who can tell north from south in the woods can duplicate the feat out of sight of land.

  4. Martin  •  Aug 30, 2010 @9:28 pm

    Sun, stars and prevailing winds.

  5. Patrick  •  Aug 31, 2010 @3:57 am

    I don't know how he could do it in a cave Brian, which is as pitch black an environment as you'll find on earth. But according to Deutscher, he can.

    And thanks Brandon, my fingers got ahead of my brain while I was typing that.

  6. ZK  •  Aug 31, 2010 @9:18 am

    I don't get it. The author relates a story about how a child who spoke in geocentric language got confused (to the point of non-function) simply from moving to a new village (where he didn't know the landmarks). Then, a paragraph later, the author makes a bunch of un-sourced claims on how they've all got superhuman navigational powers.
    Which is it?

  7. mojo  •  Sep 1, 2010 @8:36 am

    While "Australian Aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr " may be fascinating, it's applicability would seem to be severely limited. Unless you're wandering the outback, I mean.

  8. eddie  •  Sep 2, 2010 @7:38 am

    I have, for as long as I can remember, unconsciously maintained an internal compass. If it occurs to me to do so, I can unhesitatingly point to the direction I think of as north – in any location, in any environment, familiar or not. I don't know how or why I do this… I just always have.

    At some point in my adult life, I realized that my internal compass is locally consistent, but wildly inaccurate in absolute terms. The direction I think of as north in some location might actually be east, northwest, or south-by-southeast… but as long as I'm in that location (whether it's a single building or an entire town) I'll keep thinking of that one direction as "north".

    Does anyone else do this?

    I try not to think about it too much, lest it drive me crazy.

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