How do you refer to your left foot with languages that only use cardinal directions?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-24 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

To elaborate on Joe Devney’s answer to How do you refer to your left foot with languages that only use cardinal directions?

Yes, your South foot, if you’re facing west, and your North foot, if you’re facing east. Just as geographically oriented languages will refer to it as your seaward foot if you’re by the beach, and as your landward foot if you turn around.

That’s the thing about languages with no relative direction. They really have No. Relative. Direction.

Which means, you might ponder, that they don’t refer to their left foot the same way all the time; how they name it depends on which way they’re facing. Yes it does. They know it’s the same foot, they just shrug off the fact that the name for it changes. Just as you shrug off the fact that your left is the opposite of my left.

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