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Re: left and right

From:Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...>
Date:Thursday, April 3, 2008, 23:17
On Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:11:00 EDT, MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM wrote:

>Does anyone know of any cultures that don't have the concept of "left" and >"right", or don't have words for these concepts? > >stevo </HTML>
Yes; unfortunately I don't remember the name of the language, though. Nor the name of the author, nor the title of the work. But in essence, there is at least one culture (I think more than one; and I think one is in the Pacific or in Oceania or near Australia somewhere) without these concepts; and interestingly when a direction comes up in confversation, and they are later asked to remember it, they remember a direction parallel to the originial direction; their sense of direction is not deictic. Sorry I can't remember the details better. (I don't know that they don't distinguish, say, the left hand from the right hand (or whatever) somehow; it's just that they don't have "left" and "right" as directional or locational concepts.)