Through the Language Glass, Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

giving spatial directions. One could, for example, just point at a particular direction and say “go that way.” But for simplicity, let’s concentrate on the differences between the egocentric and the geographic systems. Each system of coordinates has advantages and disadvantages, and in practice we use both in our daily lives, depending on their appropriateness to the context. It would be most natural to use cardinal directions when giving instructions for hiking in the open countryside, for example, or more generally for talking about large-scale orientation. “Oregon is north of California” is more natural than “Oregon is to the right of California if you’re facing the sea.” Even inside some cities, especially those with clear geographic axes, people use fixed geographic concepts such as “uptown” or “downtown.” But on the whole, when giving driving or walking directions in town, it is far more usual to use the egocentric coordinates: “turn left, then take the third right,” and so on. The egocentric coordinates are even more dominant when we describe small-scale spaces, especially inside buildings. The geographic directions may not be entirely absent (real estate agents may wax lyrical about south-facing living rooms, for instance), but this usage is at best marginal. Just think how ridiculous it would be to say “When you get out of the elevator, walk south and then take the second door to the east.” When Pooh gets wedged in Rabbit’s front doorway and is forced to remain there for a whole week to reduce his girth, A. A. Milne refers to the “North end” and “the South end” of Pooh and thereby highlights the desperate fixity of his predicament. But think how absurd it would be for an aerobic trainer or a ballet teacher to say “now raise your north hand and move your south leg eastward.”

Why does the egocentric system feel so much easier and more natural to handle? Simply because we always know where “in front of” us is and where “behind” and “left” and “right” are. We don’t need a map or a compass to work this out, we don’t need to look at the sun or the North Star, we just feel it, because the egocentric system of coordinates is based directly on our own body and our immediate visual field. The front-back axis cuts right between our two eyes: it is a long imaginary line that extends straight from our nose into the distance and which turns with our nose and eyes wherever and whenever they turn. And likewise, the left-right axis, which cuts through our shoulders, always obligingly adapts itself to our own orientation.

The system of geographic coordinates, on the other hand, is based on external concepts that do not adapt themselves to our own orientation and that need to be computed (or remembered) from the position of the sun or the stars or from features of the landscape. So on the whole, we revert to the geographic coordinates only when we really need to do so: if the egocentric system is not up for the task or if the geographic directions are specifically relevant (for instance, in evaluating the merits of south-facing rooms).

Indeed, philosophers and psychologists from Kant onwards have argued that all spatial thinking is essentially egocentric in nature and that our primary notions of space are derived from the planes that go through our bodies. One of the trump arguments for the primacy of the egocentric coordinates was of course human language. The universal reliance of languages on the egocentric coordinates, and the privileged position that all languages accord the egocentric coordinates over all other systems, was said to parade before us the universal features of the human mind.

But then came Guugu Yimithirr. And then came the astounding realization that those naked Aborigines who two centuries ago gave the kangaroo to the world had never heard of Immanuel Kant. Or at least they had never read his famous 1768 paper on the primacy of the egocentric conception of space to language and mind. Or at the very least, if they had read it, they never got round to applying Kant’s analysis to their language. As it turns out, their language does not make any use of egocentric coordinates at all!

CRYING NOSE TO THE SOUTH

In retrospect, it seems almost a miracle that when John Haviland started researching Guugu Yimithirr in the 1970s, he could still find anyone who spoke the language at all. For the Aborigines’ brush with civilization was not entirely conducive to the conservation of their language.

After Captain Cook departed in 1770, the Guugu Yimithirr were at first spared intense contact with Europeans, and for a whole century were largely left to their own devices. But when the forces of progress eventually did arrive, they came with lightning speed. Gold was discovered in the area in 1873, not far from the spot where Cook’s Endeavour had once moored, and a town named after Cook was founded-quite literally-overnight. One Friday in October 1873, a ship full of prospectors sailed into a silent, lonely, distant river mouth. And on the Saturday, as one of the travelers later described, “we were in the middle of a young diggings township-men hurrying to and fro, tents rising in all directions, the shouts of sailors and labourers landing more horses and cargo, combined with the rattling of the donkey-engine, cranes and chains.” Following in the footsteps of the diggers, farmers started taking up properties along the Endeavour River. The prospectors needed land for mining, and the farmers needed the land and the water holes for their cattle. In the new order, there was not much space left for the Guugu Yimithirr. The farmers resented their burning of grass and chasing the cattle away from the water holes, so the police were employed to remove the natives from the settlers’ land. The Aborigines reacted with a certain degree of antagonism, and this in turn provoked the settlers to a policy of extermination. Less than a year after Cooktown was founded, the Cooktown Herald explained in an editorial that “when savages are pitted against civilisation, they must go to the wall; it is the fate of their race. Much as we may deplore the necessity for such a state of things, it is absolutely necessary, in order that the onward march of civilisation may not be arrested by the antagonism of the aboriginals.” The threats were not empty, for the ideology was carried out through a policy of “dispersion,” which meant shooting aboriginal camps out of existence. Those natives who had not been “dispersed” either retreated in isolated bands into the bush or were drawn to the town, where they were reduced to drink and prostitution.

In 1886, thirteen years after Cooktown was founded, Bavarian missionaries established a Lutheran mission at Cape Bedford, to the north of the town, to try to salvage the wrecked souls of the lost pagans. Later, the mission moved to a place christened Hopevale, farther inland. The mission became a sanctuary for the remaining Aborigines from the entire region and beyond. Although people speaking many different aboriginal languages were brought to Hopevale, Guugu Yimithirr was dominant and became the language of the whole community. A Mr. Schwarz, the head of the mission, translated the Bible into Guugu Yimithirr, and although his command of the language was moderate, his faulty Guugu Yimithirr eventually became enshrined as a kind of “church language,” which people can’t easily understand but which enjoys an aura much like that of the English of the King James Bible.

In the following decades, the mission underwent further trials and tribulations. During World War II, the whole community was forcefully relocated to the south, and the septuagenarian missionary Schwarz, who had arrived in Cooktown aged nineteen and had lived among the Guugu Yimithirr for half a century, was interred as an enemy alien. And yet, defying the odds, the Guugu Yimithirr language somehow refused to give up the ghost. Well into the 1980s, there were still some older men around who spoke an authentic version of the language.

Haviland discovered that Guugu Yimithirr, as spoken by the older generation, does not have words for “left” or “right” as directions at all. Even more strangely, it does not even use terms such as “in front of” or “behind” to describe the position of objects. Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr use the four cardinal directions: gungga (North), jiba (South), guwa (West), and naga (East). (In practice, their directions are slightly skewed from the compass North, by about 17 degrees, but this is of not much consequence to our present concerns.)

If Guugu Yimithirr speakers want someone to move over in a car to make room, they will say naga-naga manaayi, which means “move a bit to the east.” If they want to tell you to move a bit back from the table, they will say guwa-gu manaayi, “move a bit to the west.” It is even unusual to say only “move a bit that way” in Guugu Yimithirr. Rather, one has to add the correct direction “move a bit that way to the south.” Instead of saying that John is “in front of the tree,” they would say, “John is just north of the tree.” If they want to tell you to take the next left turn, they would say, “go south here.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they would say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table.” To tell you to turn off the camping stove, they would say, “turn the knob east.”

In the 1980s, another linguist, Stephen Levinson, also came to Hopevale, and he describes some of his outlandish experiences with Guugu Yimithirr direction giving. One day, while he was trying to film the poet Tulo telling a traditional myth, Tulo suddenly told him to stop and “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.” In another instance, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker called Roger explained where frozen fish could be found in a shop some thirty miles away. You will find them “far end this side,” Roger said, gesturing to his right with two flicks of