Guugu Yimithirr Language Puns

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 94%. (I'm a bot)

> This does not mean, of course, that English speakers are unable to understand the differences between evenings spent with male or female neighbors, but it does mean that they do not have to consider the sexes of neighbors, friends, teachers and a host of other persons each time they come up in a conversation, whereas speakers of some languages are obliged to do so.

> The area where the most striking evidence for the influence of language on thought has come to light is the language of space - how we describe the orientation of the world around us.

> In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life.

> When Guugu Yimithirr speakers were asked how they knew where north is, they couldn't explain it any more than you can explain how you know where "Behind" is.

> If you speak a Guugu Yimithirr-style language, your memories of anything that you might ever want to report will have to be stored with cardinal directions as part of the picture.

> So while you will see and remember the same room twice, a speaker of a geographic language will see and remember two different rooms.

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Hi all,

I am working on my thesis and one of the segments is about how language and thought are connected.

I found an article by Betty Birner(1) who speaks of the Guugu Yimithirr language (spoken in North Queensland, Australia) which uses absolutes instead of relatives to refer to space; it uses North, East, South and West rather than left and right.

Then, in another article, by Lera Boroditsky(2), I read of Pormpuraaw ("a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia"), where space is referred to in the same way as in Guugu Yimithirr.

Is Guugu Yimithirr used in the Pormpuraaw community?

Or are both articles talking about the same place (I don't know Australia [I'm from Western Europe, and have never been there], nor how big communities might be, and since the community is approximately around the same area as where the language is spoken...)?

Or do the people in the Pormpuraaw community use another language which is closely enough related to Guugu Yimithirr that the space concept is described in the same way (much like western languages tend to refer to space as right and left)?

Or...?

Thanks in advance!

(1)https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/does-language-i-speak-influence-way-i-think (2)https://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think

It’s in the title. Have you ever come accross this phenomenon? Do you know what it’s called?

For example, if your native language is Polish and you’re learning English, you’re perfectly satisfied with the sentence: "Cat is on table". Of course, you’ve heard your teacher’s explanation, "the cat" means the only relevant cat in your narrative context, while "a cat" means one cat among many other possible cats. Same thing with the table. But it gets really puzzling and challenging when they insist that choosing between "a" and "the" is not only an option, it’s an obligation.

Now let’s look at an English speaker learning Polish, whenever they use an infinitive verb, they have to chose between the following: imperfective (for ongoing or repeated actions) or perfective (for actions that are complete or exhausted). And here again, the English speaker can’t just say "I need to call my friend", they also have to determine whether they mean "to call" as a complete action or as an ongoing action.

Now imagine that our Englishman and our Pole are learning Thai. When they use a simple pronoun such as "you" or "me", they have to determine the age difference and the type of relationship (hierarchy, familiarity) between the people involved. When they qualify or count a noun, they must add a classifier, which is some type of generic category word. Very often there are several classifiers to chose from. So you can’t just say "we have two solutions" (counted noun) or "we have a good solution" (qualified noun), you need to chose a classifier which in this case can be the word "story" (story works as a classifier for many abstract nouns) or the word "path". So basically you need to determine whether you mean "solution" as a story or as a path.

A Thai speaker learning English will probably find it both interesting and difficult to have the obligation to chose a tense every time they use a verb, since verb tenses are undetermined in Thai (although they can also be defined by adverbs).

Please note that I’m not refering to cases where a language gives you the possibility to be specific where your own language is vague, whithout forcing you to be specific, but rather to cases when that becomes an obligation.

I hope it makes sense

Sign language.

Core-ean

Smiles. The first and the last letter are a mile apart.

Edit: looks like most people want to learn japanese, german and french. Edit 2: a few also russian Edit 3: damn those are a lot of hindi people Edit 4: stop commenting jesus i cant read them all

ETA: Not asking for judgement on the personal medical decision MY family made for OUR daughter. She has not had an interest in an implant but if she does later on, the option is available. We wanted her to have the choice, but also to grow up in deaf culture. I am not going to defend this anymore to Internet randoms, but please consider researching deaf opinions on the matter. As a hearing person, I can only give a very limited perspective.

Hi all. I (30F) am hearing, married to a deaf man (32M) - I’m going to call him Walter - and we have a deaf daughter (6F) - I’ll call her Cora. Walter comes from a primarily deaf family but my family is all hearing. We have chosen to raise Cora with sign language and not go for an implant - this is simply for context, I am NOT seeking judgement on this!

Before Walter and I got married, my parents began to take classes to learn ASL, as did my brother and his family. My sister, Emily, took them for a bit but ended up not continuing due to “lack of interest.” She and her husband have not taken any lessons, nor have their 3 children. Walter tried introducing their daughter to baby sign when she and Cora were both very young but my brother in law asked him to stop, as he didn’t want to “confuse her.” Cora and her cousins play as best they can with the language barrier but it’s extremely frustrating for her to feel like she isn’t being understood. When my brother’s children (who visit only a few times a year) visit, they interpret for her, or Walter and I have to constantly be looking over their shoulders to help resolve their miscommunications, which is too helicopter parent for me.

When we learned Cora was deaf, Emily pestered me about getting her an implant and continues to send me shame-y Facebook posts about the benefits of the implant and those videos of babies hearing for the first time. She constantly says it’s “better than having to learn two languages.” She’s been very pushy about it, to the point she and Walter got in a heated argument over it. Since then, she has not pestered him about it, only me.

My last straw was this past weekend. Emily was with all her kids, teaching them a game. I noticed that Cora wasn’t joining, so I brought her over and Emily outright told me that Cora couldn’t play, because it’s a game “for people who can speak.” I was fuming and pulled her aside. I told her that my daughter can communicate, just not how Emily wants, and said that I won’t have my daughter excluded for something so

Parseltongue

This sub was kind of a pandemic creation. I made it last November, a year ago, and really loved it. Even now that I don't post much, I still love Pacific History - I'm doing a project on Marquesan art for French class (that i'm kind of putting off by writing this rn). Anyway, I started making a meme every day, then dropped to every 2, then a couple times a week, and eventually, in late september I just stopped. Around the same time, I quit discord. Now that the real world was coming back, it was time to get off the internet. But I'm just writing this to say that even though the sub might not be active now, I am still very proud of how far it came in a year - 2,400 people chillin' on a beach, wow! I hope that, if nothing else, I gave someone just a little more interest in the Tu'i Tonga, or the Guugu Yimithirr, or the Aleut. Best wishes on your learning journey, and ia manuia le malaga. May your journey through the aotūroa of life be a good one.

You didn't 'catch' anything. The cold caught you. Can you imagine an antelope saying, "Look I caught a Cheetah! It's all over me"

Wrong

When I was 18 I was in an accident that caused TBI, resulting in me losing most of my hearing in both ears, making me deaf. I didn't qualify for cochlear implants, so being deaf was just my new reality.

Obviously this derailed my life for a while. University got pushed back, and I was depressed for a long time. Eventually I got back out there, discovered the deaf community, learned ASL (american sign language), and at 26 I now feel very content with my life.

My parents were devastated by my accident, and our relationship has never been the same. A few years ago I told them I have embraced being deaf, and I asked them if they would learn ASL, as that is now how I prefer to communicate. They said no at the time because they didn't have time to learn a new language. I have tried many times over the years to try to give them information on deafness and ASL, but they have shown no interest.

We communicate now mainly by using voice-to-text on our phones, which is far from perfect, and very chaotic when multiple people are talking. Trying to keep up with conversations is exhausting, and people are constantly getting frustrated with me for not following along. Often we watch movies, but they refuse to turn the captions on because it's "annoying", despite the fact that it means I can't understand the movie at all.

This past Christmas, I once again struggled with conversations, which once again resulted in me being either ignored or yelled at. Before I went home again, I sat my parents down and told them that if they did not begin to learn ASL, I would not be visiting again for a long time. I told them I don't expect them to ever be fluent, but I need them to show effort in learning. I told them that they have continuously dismissed my needs as a deaf person, and that if they want to continue to have a meaningful relationship with me, we need to have some kind of shared language.

This didn't go over well at all, as my parents accused me of wanting to cut them off, which isn't true. I just can't do any more visits where my presence feels like a burden. My brother and I have been texting since then, and he thinks I'm being hugely unfair.

So AITA?

EDIT I can't respond to everyone, but thank you everyone so much for your kind words and support. I have been spending the last few days wondering if I'm being unreasonable or dramatic, as even though my friends (most of whom are deaf) support me, I didn't know what the hearing would would think of this. I can n

I'll try to guess which language it is :D

Edit: thanks so much to everyone who has commented, I'm having so much fun trying to guess all the languages

Edit 2: sorry if you will have to wait to see what's my guess but I didn't aspect so many comments Aaaaa

American

I guess I prefer the mother tongue.

Hi all,

I am working on my thesis and one of the segments is about how language and thought are connected.

I found an article by Betty Birner(1) who speaks of the Guugu Yimithirr language (spoken in North Queensland, Australia) which uses absolutes instead of relatives to refer to space; it uses North, East, South and West rather than left and right.

Then, in another article, by Lera Boroditsky(2), I read of Pormpuraaw ("a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia"), where space is referred to in the same way as in Guugu Yimithirr.

Is Guugu Yimithirr used in the Pormpuraaw community?

Or are both articles talking about the same place (I don't know Australia [I'm from Western Europe, and have never been there], nor how big communities might be, and since the community is approximately around the same area as where the language is spoken...)?

Or do the people in the Pormpuraaw community use another language which is closely enough related to Guugu Yimithirr that the space concept is described in the same way (much like western languages tend to refer to space as right and left)?

Or...?

Thanks in advance!

(1)https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/does-language-i-speak-influence-way-i-think

(2)https://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think

Sign Language

Smiles, there's a mile between each "s"

Core-ean