Does your language shape how you think?

A fascinating article in the NYTIMES magazine by Guy Deutscher on language and how it can influence your ability to understand certain concepts.

It is particularly interesting in discussing languages that use egocentric coordinates (left, right, straight, behind) vs. languages that use cardinal directions - north, south east west. Anyone who has lived in Bali and has tried to ask directions has experienced this - the Balinese never say "take a left at the light and then take your 2nd right." - they would say "Go north, and at the light, east, and then after two blocks, go north again."

But Deutscher errs when he leaves the impression that the Balinese have a purely cardinal approach to orientation.

For us, it might seem the height of absurdity for a dance teacher to say, “Now raise your north hand and move your south leg eastward.” But the joke would be lost on some: the Canadian-American musicologist Colin McPhee, who spent several years on Bali in the 1930s, recalls a young boy who showed great talent for dancing. As there was no instructor in the child’s village, McPhee arranged for him to stay with a teacher in a different village. But when he came to check on the boy’s progress after a few days, he found the boy dejected and the teacher exasperated. It was impossible to teach the boy anything, because he simply did not understand any of the instructions. When told to take “three steps east” or “bend southwest,” he didn’t know what to do. The boy would not have had the least trouble with these directions in his own village, but because the landscape in the new village was entirely unfamiliar, he became disoriented and confused. Why didn’t the teacher use different instructions? He would probably have replied that saying “take three steps forward” or “bend backward” would be the height of absurdity. 

 This is interesting, but actually, the Balinese system does not use cardinal directions. In Bali, Cardinal directions exist, but they via with the kaja-kelod concept - an orientation system that considers the central mountain, Gunung Agung, to be "north" and the sea to be "south". When a Balinese tells you to go north, he might be telling you to go "toward Agung Mountain", even if it is situated to the south, east or west of where you are!

Some of Fred Eismen's writing on the subject has found its way online:

ORIENTATION IN BALI begins with the sacred mountain, Gunung Agung, which stands 3,142 meters high in the eastern central part of the island. Gunung (Mount) Agung is the dwelling place of the Hindu gods. Toward the mountain is called kaja. Because Gunung Agung is in a fairly central location, kaja is a variable direction. It is north for inhabitants of South Bali and south for those who live in North Bali.Whether north or south, it is always "up," the sacred direction toward God. Antipodal to kaja is kelod, seaward, toward th e lower elevations and away from the holy mountain. Kelod is "down," less sacred than kaja, even impure. The second-most sacred direction, after kaja, is kangin, "east," the direction from which the sun, an important manifestation of God, rises. Kangin's opposite to the west, kauh, is correspondingly less sacred.

I am not sure that there is even a word for this way of thinking - it isn't egocentric, it isn't cardinal. "Agung-centric"?

In any case, it is one of the many mind-blowing concepts you learn in Bali.