Mapping the Land with Language

Quick, do something for me. Point to your left. Easy, right? Now, without checking your phone, point north. For many of us, that second request is a bit trickier. We might hesitate, glance at the sun, or just shrug. The concepts of “left” and “right” are second nature, while “north” and “south” often require a moment of conscious calculation.

But what if your language didn’t have words for “left” or “right”? What if, to ask for the salt shaker, you had to say, “Could you pass the salt to the west?” This isn’t a thought experiment; it’s the daily reality for speakers of languages like Guugu Yimithirr, an Aboriginal language from Far North Queensland, Australia. Their way of speaking forces a constant, profound awareness of their place in the world, mapping the land not onto their bodies, but their bodies onto the land.

The World in Two Frames: Relative vs. Absolute

To understand what makes Guugu Yimithirr so remarkable, we first need to grasp how languages talk about space. Linguists generally identify two primary spatial frames of reference:

• Relative (or Egocentric) Frame: This is the system most English speakers use instinctively. We locate things relative to our own bodies. A cup is to my left, the dog is in front of me, and the car is parked behind the house. The coordinates change as soon as I turn around; what was on my left is now on my right.
• Absolute (or Geocentric) Frame: This system uses fixed external bearings, like the cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) or other prominent geographical features (uphill/downhill, toward/away from the sea). These directions don’t change, no matter which way you are facing. North is always north.

Most languages use a mix of these systems. We might say “the book is on your left,” but also “our house is on the north side of the city.” What’s fascinating about Guugu Yimithirr is that it relies exclusively on an absolute frame of reference.

Living in a Cardinal World

In the community of Hope Vale, where Guugu Yimithirr is spoken, spatial language is always absolute. There is no linguistic way to say “left” or “right.” This isn’t just for large-scale navigation; it permeates every aspect of life, down to the smallest interactions.

Linguist John Haviland, who has studied the community for decades, documented countless examples. A speaker might say:

• “There’s a fly on your southern leg.”
• “Move the cup a little to the east.”
• A common greeting isn’t “How are you?” but “Where are you going?” with an expected answer like, “South-southwest, for a short distance.”

This linguistic requirement has profound cognitive consequences. From a very young age, Guugu Yimithirr speakers must know their orientation. They don’t just learn north, south, east, and west as abstract concepts; they live them. They possess what has been described as a “mental compass” that is always on, constantly and subconsciously updating their position in the landscape.

In his book Through the Language Glass, linguist Guy Deutscher recounts a stunning story. While watching a video with a Guugu Yimithirr speaker, a man in the film points to a scar on his chest. Without hesitation, the speaker explains in his language that the man was bitten by a shark “on his southern leg.” Even when describing a scene from a film, or recounting a memory from years ago, the absolute directions of the original event are preserved.

The Built-in Compass and the Shape of Memory

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, led by Stephen Levinson, conducted experiments that beautifully illustrate this cognitive difference. In one study, they showed an English speaker and a Guugu Yimithirr speaker a sequence of cards on a table. Then, they moved the participants to another room facing a different direction and asked them to recreate the sequence.

The English speakers, using a relative frame, arranged the cards relative to their own body (“the first card was to my left, the second in the middle…”). So, in the new room, they laid them out in the same left-to-right pattern.

The Guugu Yimithirr speakers did something completely different. They arranged the cards according to the cardinal directions of the original layout. If the cards were originally laid out from east to west, they would lay them out east to west in the new room, even though it meant arranging them in what an English speaker would perceive as the “opposite” direction (right-to-left).

This demonstrates that their memory of the event itself was encoded in absolute coordinates. They knew where “north” was at all times, even in an unfamiliar, windowless room after being disoriented.

This shows that for Guugu Yimithirr speakers, the landscape is not a passive backdrop. It is an active, organizing principle for thought, language, and memory. They don’t just navigate the world; the world itself provides the grid for their cognition.

Not Just an Australian Phenomenon

While Guugu Yimithirr is a classic example, it’s far from unique. Across the globe, many languages favor absolute frames of reference, often tied to their specific geography.

• Tzeltal, a Mayan language spoken in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, uses an “uphill/downhill” system based on the mountainous terrain. Even on a flat table, an object is described as being “uphill” (roughly south) or “downhill” (roughly north) from another.
• In Bali, speakers use a system oriented toward the sacred mountain, Mount Agung (kaja), and away from it, toward the sea (kelod).
• Some languages in Nepal use a similar uphill/downhill system dictated by the Himalayas.

Does Language Shape How We Think?

The existence of absolute spatial reference provides some of the most compelling evidence for the theory of linguistic relativity (often called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)—the idea that the language we speak influences how we perceive and organize the world.

It’s not that English speakers can’t think in cardinal directions, or that Guugu Yimithirr speakers are incapable of understanding a relative concept. Rather, it’s about what our language forces us to pay attention to. The grammar of Guugu Yimithirr demands a constant attentiveness to geographical orientation, and as a result, its speakers develop a cognitive skill that seems almost superhuman to those of us who regularly get lost in a shopping mall.

The world’s languages are a testament to the incredible diversity of human cognition. By mapping the land with language, cultures like the Guugu Yimithirr don’t just create a different way of speaking; they build an entirely different way of being in the world—one that is deeply, constantly, and beautifully connected to the earth beneath their feet.