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
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.
Yea, this just happened pop into my head. I found it really interesting and thought you might too
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 don’t know that culture, but in general those are questions they learn not to say. Perhaps they point to a place “there” and that is enough.
When translating from a gendered language to English (which doesn’t grammatically require a gender for everything) I often has to guess was gender important or not - sometimes this is not obvious.