Amazonian Tribe Has No Word To Express Numbers 482
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."
numbers probably came from (Score:5, Interesting)
Lessons from a Farmboy (Score:5, Interesting)
So, I grew up on a Bushveld Farm in Africa.
And, as one does on farms in the raw, one must maintain a system of control... over baboons.
Experience taught the farmers how to deal with baboons, as a necessity towards having a harvest- baboons are quite destructive you see.
The first method is by catching one using the 'pumpkin' trick. Quite easy:
Tie down a pumkin, make a hole in it just big enough for a baboon hand to slip in and wait.
The baboon will come along and stick his hand into the pumpkin, grab a handful and then try to remove his hand... but as an empty hand can go in, the clenched fist cannot get out... baboon does not want to let go... and is therefore stuck. Then you paint the fellow white, and let it go. The returning baboon will scare the living daylights out of his tribe and they will disappear for a while.
The other method... well... shoot a couple and the farm will be avoided for a LONG time.
It is not as easy as one would think to hunt baboons, firstly, as they have very effective watch..err.. watchmen (Bobejaan-brandwag) who will sound the alarm as soon as they spot people with guns. The trick is as follows (works for Maize fields):
If one man walks into the field, and hides, the baboons stay away.
If two goes in, and one comes out, they stay away.
If three goes in and two comes out... they stay away...
But if four goes in and three comes out... they seem to think that many went in and many left... all right to plunder. (ok, know it should be 'feed', but we live in a relative universe!)
We used to tease and say "1-2-many" is how baboons count. So, imagine my puzzlement when I saw that there are... well... humans living by a similar system!
Here we are wielding the Power of the Universe (maths) as if it is nothing... and others are still learning how to count!
Probably our ability and need to express numbers came from... capitalism :-)
Dammit... finding 'good' in capitalism is painful! :-(
Completely clashes with my view utopian socialism
Another possibility... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a general property of people that the most objects they can generally count in a single glance is around 5. The most things a typical person can easily remember in the short term is seven.
Maybe the "one" word means "I can easily commit the scene to memory at a glance", meaning that the scene has a few easily remembered objects in it.
The "two" word might mean "yes I can remember that scene, but I have to concentrate to do it". Typically that would mean the scene has 5-6 items.
The "many" word might mean "no I cannot easily remember the number and arrangement of objects in that scene"
In other words the word used depends on the mental effort required.
Sanskrit: singular, dual and plural (Score:3, Interesting)
A side note: Sanskrit [wikipedia.org] has singular, dual and plural [google.co.in] forms of words. A lot of i18n infrastructure could get broken if this language got back to life all of a sudden.
Example: boy, (two boys), (more than two boys) === baalakah [google.co.in](1), baalakau [google.co.in](2), baalakaah [google.co.in](2+)
This Slashdot ignored non ascii when I previewed this, so added the google search results for the devanagari [wikipedia.org] characters used to compose these three words instead.
I'm guessing the need arose as a shorthand to talk about two's - eg two people, two oxen working in the form, two feet, two hands and so on.
Anyone know of any other language tha has dual forms of words?
Re:Words are made up as they are needed (Score:5, Interesting)
But it seems like they have that to some extent. If they have a "range" that indicates small/medium/large, then they're still counting. They just don't have a word for the specific total.
If they know that "this many" units of food was enough to feed them last time, then "this many" units of food will likely serve that purpose next time.
If the size of the group grows, then they need "this many" plus "some more". And that "some more" will then be wrapped into "this many" the following year.
Re:numbers probably came from (Score:5, Interesting)
IAAHTNL (I am a highly trained ninja linguist) and I'd just like to say that Piraha is quite alien in general. From the point of view of the Piraha, all other human languages, whether spoken by city-dwellers or nomads, are pretty much the same.
That is, they MIGHT say that, if Piraha culture had any use for abstract concepts and stuff they couldn't see.
Re:Sanskrit: singular, dual and plural (Score:3, Interesting)
Polish, which is quite a modern and used language (40 million native speakers) uses a similar construction:
pencil:
1 olowek
2 olowki
5 olowkow
(polish letters dropped because /. is obviously menarded. how the fuck can you not use utf-8 in 2008?)
Re:Words are made up as they are needed (Score:5, Interesting)
The best example is the omnipresent claim that Inuit have dozens of words for snow.
Actually, that's not a very good example at all. The main reason people say that is because Inuit is a polysynthetic language, which blurs the line between word and sentence.
You also have to consider that the guy who made the claim actually used as his examples any reference to frozen water in the language...even if it really didn't refer to the powdery white stuff. If he didn't know English, and were making a similar claim, he'd say that at least ice, sleet, hail, snow, blizzard, and glacier are all words for snow.
Sometimes, even if you interact with it a lot, one word is enough. Sometimes, also, context plays a big part in defining the language, so you don't need as many words to convey the message (and this is *absolutely true* of a polysynthetic language).
Quite frankly, I have seen no conclusive evidence that quantity or quality of words are directly tied to the cultures from which they come. Sometimes a word will come into existence when there is little need (example: defenestration), and sometimes people will *badly* adapt an existing word to mean something new rather than creating a new, better word to fill the gap (example: usages of the word "perfect" in different domains). This tribe may be different, but that might make them the exception, rather than the rule.
Margret Mead, again? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_Age_in_Samoa [wikipedia.org]
Additionally, we also have the Eskimo/words for snowflake issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow [wikipedia.org]
The truth is that accurately studying other cultures is difficult. I have not read the original journal article, but I would take this with a grain of salt.
Not surprising. (Score:5, Interesting)
The English language has no word for some Amazon insects. English speakers could learn, but it's not useful in their cultures.
Two tests: Give the Amazon natives sufficient food and water and safety from other people, and see how long they can comfortably survive in lands where English is spoken.
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.
Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lessons from a Farmboy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
The latin language does have a word "nulla" for zero/nothing was used in numeric context.
I think you mean that the roman numeral system doesn't use a zero digit, but this wasn't becuase they had no concept of zero, it was because their numeric system didn't need it. Zero's are only needed in a system such as our where digit value is context specific (i.e. the "1" in "100" means something different than the "1" in "10") - the roman numeric system doesn't work this way.
Re:Few, many, Lots (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Few, many, Lots (Score:2, Interesting)
As a non-native English speaker, I always have a problem understanding the use of "a number of" i.e:
Does "a number of" means a large number or a small number, or is it just a meaningless quantity?
Re:Lessons from a Farmboy (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw something similar on TV a while ago. Some African hunters needing water would do this trick only using a small hole between some large rocks. The baboon would be captured because they wouldn't want to release the stone before the man got hold of them. The man would then tie up the baboon and feed it salt until the baboon was incredibly thirsty. Then, with the baboon on a leash, the man would untie it and the creature would go straight to the nearest place with water which baboons would not normally do.
Numbers, or quantities? (Score:0, Interesting)
I find this rather intriguing. I'm a professional translator, bilingual (Japanese, English), and very interested in the language/culture combination in general, but not necessarily educated in these areas.
First of all, I find it very hard to believe that they don't have numbers. I do believe, however, that they may not use numbers as frequently as most other languages do.
For example, in the English language there are items that can be counted, and items that must be measured. You can count the number of bricks, but you can't count a number of water. Water is measured, not counted. Then there are the odd ones like rice, which technically you can count, but no one does, and as a result it is another item that is measured. (Either in weight or volume.)
Japanese people have a terrible time figuring this out, and when teaching English, the general rule is "use 'a' for items that can be counted, but not with items that can't be counted. For example, I can have 'a' brick, but I can't have 'a' water." But then the rice thing throws them all off again.
The reason is that in the Japanese language, there is no numerical indicator when describing an object of ownership. You can have water, and you can have brick. Or should I say you can have a brick, and you can have a water. As you can see, these items can't be directly translated, but require a cultural and experience based reference. (FYI, this is why mechanical translation is so difficult, if not entirely impossible.)
So what about this tribe? Chances are they do have numeric words, they can count, and they can even do basic arithmetic. But they don't count things on a daily basis. Much like rice is not counted, they probably either have "lots of rice" or "just a little rice". Maybe "enough rice for your family" or "enough rice for the tribe". Neither of these use numeric references, but are well distinguishable. If there's no point in counting an item, chances are, it won't be counted.
All in all, I suspect it is a highly cultural consequence backed by ages of experience in that certain life style and surrounding. But I don't doubt that they can count, and have a word for numbers. It may not be decimal (although that's unlikely, due to the reason humans are well versed in the decimal system), and it may not apply to the same words we use, but I'm sure it is understood and exists.
If I were in charge of an expedition there, I would start to target things that are of a daily importance to these people. For example, if they have a certain method of building huts (most tribes do), asking the requirements for beams may be a hint. I would find it hard to believe that they would say "a bunch" or "a few" for things like that. For a given size structure, they would probably say "8 beams" or whatever is required. However, they may have a specific word for this already, which DESCRIBES exactly 8 beams. Going at it this way, however, eventually I'm sure the numeric lingo will be found.
As a side note, the Inuit have multiple words for snow. Heavy snow, light snow, wet snow, melting snow, slightly icy snow, very dry snow, and so on. Yet the English language has only a single word to describe "snow", and the rest are descriptors of the form of snow. I would suspect that this would be the case with these tribes as well, and why we find it so "weird" that they don't count things.
Re:Another possibility... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's the "objects", stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
What he said.
Also, I was at a talk where someone asked Gibson if the Piraha count their children. Gibson asked the man if he was a father. The man said no. Gibson said that people don't generally refer to their children by number, but by name. Everyone laughed.
Re:English Language (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Different skill sets needed (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably because morality and religiosity, even if they aren't entirely orthogonal, are most definitely not the same thing.
Re:Not surprising. (Score:5, Interesting)
An assload is about 85lbs. It is what the old U.S. Army (back in the days of the western expansion) could safely place on a mule or donkey's back for a day of travel without harming it. It was a unit to assist in calculating logistics trains.
You can hunt around for references. Enjoy.