Life without numbers...
... or colours... apparently. This caught my ear on the BBC 3 program Word of Mouth last Sunday. The Amazonian Piraha tribe have no words for number, or colours. They use three vowels, and seven or eight consonants. Actually men and women use different consonants, talk about gendered language!
This site appears to summarise an article from the journal Science, and has a number of fascinating factoids about the Piraha.
This site appears to summarise an article from the journal Science, and has a number of fascinating factoids about the Piraha.
posted by Jayarava @ 8:34 am
2 Comments:
At 7:56 pm GMT,
Anonymous said…
Completely fascinating. And as it turns out, I went to BBC4 to see if I could replay the program and they're replaying it right now! Except I can't work and listen very well at the same time...
At 9:20 pm GMT,
Anonymous said…
OK, I tried to post a comment once already! Grrrr.... Anyway this is fascinating. Went to the BBC site and listened to the report. It's mind-boggling but fascinating.
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