Amazonian Tribe Has No Word To Express Numbers

In 2004 we discussed the Piraha, a tribe in the Amazon, when a study appeared characterizing their language as a "one, two, many" language. Now reader mu22le informs us of a new study of the Piraha pointing to the possibility that they use no number words at all. Instead they seem to use the word formerly thought to mean "two" to represent a quantity of 5 or 6, and the "one" word for anything from 1 to 4. The language has about 300 native speakers. "The study... offers evidence that number words are a concept invented by human cultures as they are needed, and not an inherent part of language, Gibson said."

English Language

[mrbluze]

Has no word to express.. uhhmm... forgot what it's called now.

how ...

[Anonymous Coward]

How do they say: First Post! ??

Please forgive me for this one!

[pimpimpim]

??? Have no words for numbers
???
???
??? Profit!

Hm...

[archeopterix]

The language has about 300 native speakers.

Shouldn't it be "a large number, but not five or six" speakers?

Re:leet speak

[mrbluze]

Hold on cowboy! It has been many seconds since you last posted, please wait another many seconds before you can post again.

fantastic

[jacquesm]

then there's also no way to collect taxes. I should move...

Meaning

[Anonymous Coward]

They've got a long way to go until they figure out the meaning of life then...

Re:Please forgive me for this one!

[Atti K.]

Useless, if you can't count your profit.

Without numbers...

[mongoose(!no)]

How do they express IP addresses?

Oblig.

[dudeinthedark]

How do they indicate successful termination of their C programs?

Re:Without numbers...

[ArmyOfAardvarks]

The use the WingDings font.

Re:fantastic

[Opportunist]

You probably have to pay a little for every lot you made. With "little" and "lot" being defined by the guy who comes to get it, assisted by two large guys with mean looking clubs.

You see, the world isn't so different after all.

Link b0rked in summary

[Von Helmet]

Should be "one, two, many" [slashdot.org]

KDawson, you got a link to your own website wrong, on your own website. You n00b.

Re:Meaning

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really.

What do you get when you multiply two by many?

Many.

Imperial system

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard they have discovered that some ancient tribes in the world are still using imperial measurement. Hard to believe!

Re:fantastic

[jacquesm]

don't bring a club to a gunfight ;)

Re:Without numbers...

[pcaylor]

Here's their assigned IPv4 network range:

many.many.many.many/small

They are nowhere using it up, so thankfully they have no plans to migrate to IPv6. (Which is a good thing because if I tried this joke with an IPv6 address, it would probably trigger the lameness filter.)

Re:Meaning

[hostyle]

Too many?

Re:It's the "objects", stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

they would most likely discover (shock! horror!) that the Piraha count people exactly as you or I

Darn! Just as I was coming up with a nice scheme of making monogamy a little bit more exciting!
"No hun, it is just us few in the bed, like always"

Moving there already

[eebra82]

I'm gonna have one girlfriend there.

Re:Few, many, Lots

[otacon]

Sir I don't know where you do your trading, but I can get you 2 baskets of peas for 5 ears of corn.

This is nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead they seem to use the word formerly thought to mean "two" to represent a quantity of 5 or 6, and the "one" word for anything from 1 to 4.

Bartenders and police officers in the US dealing with drunks are very familiar with this method of counting.

Re:fantastic

[VorpalRodent]

When you say "two large guys", are you referring to "two" as a native English speaker would understand it, or "two" as one of the Piraha would understand it?
Two guys is reasonable to take on (perhaps), if I have the larger club. 10-12, on the other hand, is quite the tax collection envoy.

How many speakers?

[ettlz]

the "one" word for anything from 1 to 4. The language has about 300 native speakers.

Anyone want to try and estimate the error on that?

But I can count my profit!

[Llywelyn]

Lots!

A more realistic answer . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

If they asked instead, "how many children do you have", or "how many people are there in that hut", they would most likely

... hear as the reply:

"None of your god-damn business, you pesky anthropologist ... now get your ass out of my rain forest!"

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Lessons from a Farmboy

[Per Wigren]

We used to tease and say "1-2-many" is how baboons count

Maybe they are good at relational database modeling then!

Re:fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

One question Piraha is one to four SI questions.

Re:numbers probably came from

[Anonymous Coward]

society's that use currency/money, rather than hunter/gatherers...

and where do apostrophes come from?

Re:fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

unless it's your local gun club.

Re:It's the "objects", stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also possible all the smart people were doing other important things in the tribe.

"Yeah, they want somebody to sit around and count things all day again. Uh, give them DogBrain, he never does anything all day anyway."

Haha! Second post!

[straponego]

(in Piraha)

Re:Not surprising.

[mrbluze]

Do we get to choose which particular English speakers we send there? I've started a list already (*mumblegrumble!@$Fskn*motherinlaw*).

Re:how ...

[Anonymous Coward]

its pronounced "jU fale"

Re:Lessons from a Farmboy

[brahmix]

well said! That is why I believe stupidity is simply floating point errors caused by limited cache: This will obviously result in variance of constants :-) To put the whole thing into an analog accuracy befudgement argument just sounds cleverererrreder...

Re:Few, many, Lots

[Zencyde]

About 2 Library of Congress worth.

Re:It's the "objects", stupid

[Rogerborg]

With only 300 people, they're probably all closely related, which explains why they might have trouble counting family members. It also explains why they have a word for "5 or 6", doubtless used for fingers and toes.

Re:English Language

[Anonymous Coward]

1-4. Sell tribe new number words
5-6. ....
???. Profit?

Re:English Language

[History's Coming To]

So they're one ahead of your average /. reader, who can only count to two. One. Two. One and two. Two two's. Two two's and one....

I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. For further reading see Terry Pratchett's "Men At Arms".

Re:English Language

[mrbluze]

So they're one ahead of your average /. reade

Or your average computer which can only count to one.

Re:Hm...

[clone53421]

...and they were first clued in on this number system when they asked how many people were in their tribe and the answer was "two"...

Re:English Language

[charlieman]

Schadenfreude?

Polygamy?

[gravis777]

So, being single, married, and a polygamist is all the same?

Re:Polygamy?

[gravis777]

"Baby, I swear that you are the only one!"

Re:Different skill sets needed

[Miseph]

It would also be funnier.

"Take cover, the rookie is compiling his first code!"

"We're all gonna die!"

Re:It's the "objects", stupid

[hoggoth]

"Boopai, the white men are coming. Remind the six Kaaxai sisters that it is forbidden to utter our sacred number words in front of the outsiders."
"Yes, Pibaoi, I shall tell them. I will return in 36 minutes, approximately 5 minutes before the outsiders reach the village."
"Good man, Boopai."

"Oh, and Boopai, while you are there, get the 113 exchange-beads the sisters owe me from 3 months ago."
"Yes, Pibaoi, I will."

Re:Ignorant monkey people.

[The Redster!]

Wow. Any more trolly and we'd need a "Threshold: -Many!"

Re:Not surprising.

[BPPG]

Back in the day, my grand-dad bagged himself quite a lot of Canadian piranhas.

Re:Different skill sets needed

[Herkum01]

So you ARE working at my company aren't you? I just wish the rookie was placed a little closer to the executive suite...

Re:Hm...

[ari_j]

In this tribe, anything less than a fivesome is equivalent to masturbation.

Re:Not surprising.

[vigmeister]

higher living standards.

And that requires Numb3rs.

Friday nights at 10:00 on CBS...

Cheers!

Re:How many speakers?

[Stooshie]

plus or minus many

Re:Different skill sets needed

[Nerdposeur]

No fee needed - it's under a Destructive Commons License. :)

Advanced Mathematics in Elizabethan England

[Mark_in_Brazil]

Lord Blackadder, a favorite in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, teaches the foul-smelling peasant Baldrick mathematics:

The lesson [youtube.com]

Transcript:

Blackadder: Right, Baldrick, let's try again, shall we? This is called adding. If I have two beans, and then I add two more beans, what do I have?
Baldrick: Some beans.
Blackadder: Yes...and no. Let's try again, shall we? I have two beans, then I add two more beans. What does that make?
Baldrick: A very small casserole.
Blackadder: Baldrick, the ape creatures of the Indus have mastered this. Now try again. One, two, three, four. So how many are there?
Baldrick: Three
Blackadder: What?
Baldrick: And that one.
Blackadder: Three and that one. So if I add that one to the three what will I have?
Baldrick: Oh! Some beans.
Blackadder: Yes. To you Baldrick, the Renaissance was just something that happened to other people wasn't it?

Re:Not surprising.

[Provocateur]

Then give native English speakers sufficient food and water and safety from other people, and see how long they can comfortably survive in the Amazon region.

And bring cameras. Tape these guys 24x7. There's an idea...

Re:Few, many, Lots

[SQLGuru]

Why bother looking them up? We all know that 64.9% of all statistics are made up on the fly. The other 36.7% are erroneous.

Layne

Re:fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bring a gun to a fightclub either.

Re:Not surprising.

[Lord Apathy]

I see nothing really wrong here. Where I live people routinely give non descriptive meaning to words as numbers. I'm learned not to try to figure it out but just accept it. I mean who really knows what the difference is between a ass-load and a shit-load. Or how much is really in a fuck ton.

Just smile and nod, that's what I do.

Re:Different skill sets needed

[mrogers]

Nah, we'd just write everything in Perl. Pretty much any sequence of characters is a valid Perl program. Don't ask me what it does, but it's a valid program.

They are Lost!

[LunarStudio]

Ungabunga: "They are lost and we need to find them!"
Chief Jongajonga: "How many people?!?"
Ungabunga: "Only one"
Chief Jongajonga: "WTF"

Re:Different skill sets needed

[spun]

The pygmy Bonobo chimps live with fewer predators and more resources than regular chimps. You know what they do with all their spare time? Lots and lots of very dirty primate sex.

Re:Few, many, Lots

[spun]

Or few. For one the size of a Volkswagen beetle.

Hog's heads or naked chicks?

Re:Not surprising.

[PachmanP]

I mean who really knows what the difference is between a ass-load and a shit-load. Or how much is really in a fuck ton.

Well, to be fair the fuck ton is defined in terms of shit-loads; the shit-load is defined in terms of an ass-load; and the ass-load is defined by a fecal mass stored in a hermetically sealed container in a vault in France. Finally, for reasons no one has found, the fecal mass is changing.

Anyway my point is that unit confusion is not unreasonable in this case.

Re:English Language

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Slashdot readers are all roadies?

Re:Different skill sets needed

[CastrTroy]

If syntax errors made computers explode into shrapnel, it would be more even.

Just hope you're not using VS.Net. That background compiler could be deadly.

Re:Not surprising.

[famebait]

Is that a metric shit-load or an imperial shitload?

300 Speakers

[pugugly]

Or so they tell us . . .

Re:Few, many, Lots

[antek9]

What, naked chicks, the size of a Volkswagen Beetle? Where is the shortest way OUT of this jungle, back home into civilization? No, wait...

Re:Not surprising.

[Wilson_6500]

Finally, for reasons no one has found, the fecal mass is changing.

Shit always gets deeper.