Russians seem to avoid using N, S, E, W

[Bradley Agnew Gorski]

Last weekend's NYTimes Magazine featured an article that cites, at length,
another Australian aboriginal language that uses cardinal instead of
egocentric directions. The article uses examples from a language called
Guugu Yimithirr via researchers John Haviland and Stephen Levinson, but the
phenomenon seems parallel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?pagewanted=all

Bradley

Guugu Yimithirr John Haviland and later the linguist Stephen Levinson

On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Dianna Murphy <diannamurphy at wisc.edu> wrote:

>  Dear SEELANGs,
>
> Somewhat related to this topic, there is interesting new research coming
> out of cognitive psychology that revisits -- and tries to empirically test
> -- the question of whether speakers of languages *think* and perceive the
> world differently.  Lera Boroditsky, for example, a cognitive psychologist
> at Stanford who looks at differences in domains of thought such as space,
> time, motion, color, etc., discusses the example of Kuuk Thaayorrean, an
> aboriginal language in Australia, in which speakers express all direction in
> absolute reference frames ("there's an ant on my southwest leg," is one of
> her examples from this language), compared with languages such as English
> and Russian, in which speakers tend to use more relative frames, referring
> to themselves ("there's an ant on my left leg," which references the
> speaker) or other objects (landmarks, etc.).
>
> In looking at perceptions of color, Boroditskaya compares speakers of
> Russian and English directly, testing whether speakers of these languages
> perceive BLUE differently.  Using tests of reaction time to color
> differences, she concludes that speakers of Russian do perceive blue
> (sinij/goluboj) differently than do speakers of English.
>
> The questions of whether speakers of different languages perceive the world
> differently is of course an old one, but Boroditky's research on language
> and cognition a new way of looking at possible answers.  See:
> www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/ <http://www-psych.stanford.edu/%7Elera/>
>
> Best regards,
> Dianna
>
>
>
> On 9/3/10 3:48 AM, Kenneth Brostrom wrote:
>
>> As an old friend and native Detroiter pointed out to me some time ago, the
>> East Side of Detroit is a basic grid, but the streets run from west
>> southwest to east northeast, and from south southeast to north northwest.
>>  The early French settlers came up with this scheme in order to have the
>> former streets parallel the Detroit River. The Germans, however, developed
>> the West Side, and there the street grid is true north-south and east-west.
>>  Where the two sides meet in the middle is an often confusing muddle, a mute
>> and lasting testament to cultural conflict, and a perfect place in which to
>> get lost on a dark and stormy night.  I speak from unhappy experience.
>> Coming from a Scando-Germanic background, whenever I leave the East Side,
>> that zone of Gallic whimsicality, and enter the West Side with its Teutonic
>> good sense, I heave a huge sigh of relief, and my well trained car with me.
>>  And it is westward ho! back home to Ann Arbor.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Ken Brostrom
>>
>>
>>  The fact that Russians don't use compass directions has always been
>>> frustrating to me. Whenever I come out of a Moscow metro station that I
>>> have
>>> never seen before, my first instinct is to try and figure out where north
>>> is. If I know that, I can find almost anything. But alas, on a cloudy day
>>> or
>>> at night, with no sun for guidance, I know that no one I ask will be able
>>> to
>>> tell me where north is. Of course, in the northern part of the city, I
>>> can
>>> use Ostankino as a marker. But elsewhere it's hopeless. Maybe I should
>>> carry
>>> around a compass.
>>>
>>> Perhaps I'm atypical, even for an American. My wife is ready to divorce
>>> me
>>> every time I say something like "It's on the southeast corner of
>>> Wisconsin
>>> Avenue and Reservoir Road."
>>>
>>> -Rich Robin
>>>
>>> --
>>> Richard M. Robin
>>> Director Russian Language Program
>>> The George Washington University
>>> Washington, DC 20052
>>> 202-994-7081
>>>
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>>
> --
> Dianna L. Murphy, Ph.D.
> Associate Director, Language Institute
> Associate Director, Russian Flagship Program
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
> 1322 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Avenue
> Madison, WI  53706
> (608) 262-1575
> diannamurphy at wisc.edu
> www.languageinstitute.wisc.edu
> www.sla.wisc.edu
> www.russianflagship.wisc.edu
>
>
>
>
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-- 
bradleygorski at gmail.com
+7.965.287.2737

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