Re: left and right

In a message dated 4/4/2008 01:53:54 AM Central Daylight Time,
fuscian@GMAIL.COM writes:


>  I don't know if there are no words for
> the latter at all, but they write that the concepts are not available to the
> speakers, "at least without reflection." They tie this in with the strong
> cultural tendency to keep attention away from individuals. Saying that
> something is "to the north" instead of "to my right" achieves this.
>
> Josh Roth
>
If people say "to the north" when they mean "to the right" (making it a local
reference and not really to the north at all (because 'north' and 'right' are
not related), then they have left and right and simply use a compass point as
a metaphor.  If they literally mean "to the north", then it can't be used as
"to the right", because, as I said, the two aren't related.

Thanks for the reference, Josh.

stevo   </HTML>

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