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Bonus 28: North, left, or towards the sea? Interview with Alice Gaby
🕑 Added 2019-06-06 23:55:46 +0000 UTCWhen you're giving directions, do you tell someone to turn left, turn north, turn towards the sea? Different languages favour different strategies, and sometimes even people who speak the same language use directional words differently depending on their city or local geography, especially in areas with big landmarks like mountains and islands. In this bonus episode, recorded at our liveshow in Melbourne, we get enthusiastic about words for directions with special guest Dr. Alice Gaby, an associate professor of linguistics at Monash University who researches words for directions in Kuuk Thaayorre.
We asked our audience, so we'll ask you too: do you know where north is right now? And have you ever lived in an area that had a particular local directional system?
Lauren and Alice also quiz Gretchen on whether she's learned any Australianisms on her visit to Australia, and Gretchen fires back with a few Canadianisms of her own. Let us know how well you did in the comments below!
Links:
- Alice Gaby (Website)
- Alice Gaby (Twitter)
- Kuuk Thaayorre (Wikipedia)
- Absolute and relative spatial terms (Wikipedia)
- When “North” Isn’t Actually North: Geocentric Direction Systems (Slate)
Australianisms:
Canadianisms:
You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript of this episode is available as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page. Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo. Thank you to everyone who came out to the Melbourne liveshow and especially to special guest Alice Gaby.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, and our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
Comments
Maggie+Al
That's so hard to get my head around, like walking backwards towards the future? Whoah.
Lingthusiasm
English speakers are generally considered to have two metaphors: 1. The person is moving through time (I just have to make it to Friday!) 2. The person is still and events are moving past them (I can't wait until Friday gets here!) 3. (Bonus metaphor that's not in our language, but in our gestures, where the past is on the left and the future on the right) Aymara speakers who have the past in front of them also have both the static and moving person ideas of time, but the events are laid out in the opposite direction!
Maggie+Al
When we talk about the future in front of us and the past behind us, I feel like the implication is usually that we are moving through time, we're walking towards the future. Do languages with the past in front of us speak as though time is moving past us instead? That is the easiest way for me to conceptualise it, as an English (and Russian) speaker: being overtaken by the future. Does that study have anything about the movement of time, or just static locations? --Maggie
