

What happens when a language has no numbers? - lisper
http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2013/10/16/piraha_cognitive_anumeracy_in_a_language_without_numbers.html

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michaelfeathers
Anyone interested in the Pirahã should read 'Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes:
Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle' by Daniel Everett (
[http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-
Snakes/dp/0307386...](http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-
Snakes/dp/0307386120) )

There's quite a bit about the language, but the backstory of Daniel going over
as a missionary and losing his faith (and family) while trying to convert a
happy people in no need of religion is stunning.

~~~
andyjohnson0
Everett gave a very interesting talk [1] to the Long Now org a few years ago
in which he describes some of his experiences working with the Pirahã. Video
is available at [2].

[1] [http://longnow.org/seminars/02009/mar/20/endangered-
language...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02009/mar/20/endangered-languages-
lost-knowledge-and-future/)

[2]
[http://fora.tv/2009/03/20/Daniel_Everett_Endangered_Language...](http://fora.tv/2009/03/20/Daniel_Everett_Endangered_Languages_and_Lost_Knowledge)

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riffraff
trivia: there are some languages out there which don't have different concepts
for PIROS and VÖRÖS, and just bunch them together under a single color ("red"
in english).

~~~
elnate
Red is a broad group of colours. There are plenty of more specific names for
types of red, like scarlet or ruby, does that qualify?

~~~
apostlion
I've seen somewhere a test for how many color words are there in the language
- only color-words which do not correspond to a specific material or plant
which color is emulated are accepted. So “red” or “blue” is fine, as is
“piros” or “vörös” - but “sky blue” (color of sky), “ruby” (color of the
gemstone) or “scarlet” (color of the Scarlet cloth) are not.

~~~
prof_hobart
So orange wouldn't be counted as a colour in English? I'm not sure what value
there is in measuring the amount of colour names in a language based purely on
their etymology.

~~~
apostlion
Orange wouldn't. By this logic, many oddities in color naming can be
abstracted over languages, see for example:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Univer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Universality_and_Evolution)

~~~
prof_hobart
Interesting. Does this hold true for every single language?

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JonSkeptic
I am surprised that no one has mentioned the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis[0]. It's
incredible, the effect that language can have on the mind. Given that they can
communicate in whistles and hums, I'd also be interested in a study about
their music as well.

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)

~~~
Pitarou
Everett argues in the other direction. He believes that the unusual aspects of
their language stem from their unusual culture.

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apostlion
Why would a culture that has no trade need numbers? Approximate buckets are
good enough for the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

After all, it were Sumerian traders and bureaucrats who gave us both figures
-and- numbers -and- a way to write them down.

~~~
curiousdannii
"How many children/pigs/dogs are in the house? Did we forget any?"

~~~
adamnemecek
Yeah, or alternatively how many wolves are approaching? It seems like it would
be advantageous to be able to communicate whether 5 or 50.

~~~
petsos
What would you do differently if it was 5 or 8 wolves? Having concepts like "a
few" and "a lot" seems to be enough for this case.

~~~
prof_hobart
Decide whether to send one or two of your group of 8 hunters after each of the
wolves?

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Pitarou
I really don't know whether to believe this article. The whole setup sounds a
little too ... perfect.

We have:

* a language where "speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations"

* a language that "contains no words at all for discrete numbers"

* a tribe too arrogant to learn any other language

There are stranger things in the world, but I'd take a long, hard look at the
guy reporting these facts before I took them at face value

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koala_advert
Here's an interview with a Pirahã speaker:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHv3-U9VPAs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHv3-U9VPAs)

~~~
w1ntermute
I don't see any (English) subtitles, do you?

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joe_the_user
Oh Gawd...

Read:
[http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/pesetsky/Nevin...](http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/pesetsky/Nevins_Pesetsky_Rodrigues_Piraha_Exceptionality_a_Reassessment.pdf)

Edit: and sure this is the Chomskians debunking the "upstart" Danial Everett
but this is thorough, clear and convincing in contrast to the haphazard
novelty that most Piraha discussion involves. A language with future? How...?
Well, actually the answer would be just no, that's not how it works. And sure,
this headline says "number" but all the discussions are interlinked.

~~~
einhverfr
I don't now. I read it. It seems that given that most of the documentation of
the language was done by Everett, the Chomskians have some difficulty getting
around some points.

I found the discussions of anumeracy in that PDF quite problematic because
they basically argued we don't know enough about the language to say one way
or another. Some of the difficulties, particularly adding vs removing spoons
posed significant interpretation problems for me. Of course if I was
differentiate between a few spoons and a bunch of spoons, the lines would be
different if adding spoons vs subtracting them. This is because the relative
frame of reference is different.

It seems to me that the problem is fraught with insurmountable epistemological
problems which can't be solved and therefore people get to make best guesses.
In general though I would trust the one who speaks the language more fluently
than the one who doesn't. This isn't to address novelty claims. Bahasa
Indonesia, for example, mostly lacks relative tenses as well, and Proto-Indo-
European probably did as well.

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favadi
I use a language has no numbers every day (Bash).

~~~
pavel_lishin

        for x in {0..3}; do echo $x; done

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agumonkey
Can't help but to think abotu lambda calculus encoded numbers.

~~~
Pitarou
Nothing to do with the Piraha, I fear. Get some sleep.

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etherealG
In science approximation is so common there's a required notation for
experimental measurement for it. Perhaps they're just accept that sooner than
us.

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dm2
It's not much different than most people rarely using Greek characters as
formulas or constants.

~~~
seandougall
Pretty different, actually -- the point is that they (supposedly) have no
counting system at all. They lack the concept of numbers, not just the words.

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Theodores
...they spark up conversation with the neighbouring tribe that has no concept
of time!

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-
environment-13452711](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13452711)

...and then it all falls to pieces because they have no concept of god!

More to the point, what is the big deal with counting if there is no concept
of private property?

~~~
prof_hobart
I left the house with a somewhat largish amount of children. I've still got a
somewhat largish amount of children, so I can't have left any of them behind.

~~~
meepmorp
I left the house with David, Susan, Steve, Kate, Alice, and George. I still
have David, Susan, Steve, Kate, Alice, and George, so I can't have left any
behind.

I've got issues with a lot of (Dan) Everett's work, but you don't need
counting to handle that scenario.

~~~
prof_hobart
You've now got to remember all of the kids' individual names (and hope that
you haven't got a somewhat largish amount of John Smiths in your group),
rather than remembering "I had 6. I've still got 6".

It's also even more of a challenge when the things you've got to remember
aren't easily individually identified - a flock of sheep or apples or
whatever.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It's not that hard to remember individuals' names, when there aren't all that
many of them in your society to begin with, and you've known them all your
life.

After all, you remember your parents' names, and your grandparents' names, and
probably your uncle and aunts' names.

If you went on vacation with them, would you count your family members at the
start and end of the plane ride, or would you just look around, and think,
"Marina, Richard, Victor and Mila, Irina and Alex - okay, everyone's here!"

~~~
prof_hobart
Actually I struggle pretty badly with names - I have honestly forgotten my
wife's name in the past - so I'd probably still go for counting people even if
they were in my own family. But I get your point.

What it doesn't address though, is my second point - things that don't have
unique names. Remembering how many sheep you took out to the field, how many
bowls you tooks with you to eat, how many pieces of wood you need to cut in
order to fix up your wall etc.

Clearly they have managed to find a way to cope without needing these numbers,
but I'm not sure that I buy the idea that they wouldn't regularly come across
situations where having numbers would have made their lives simpler.

~~~
teebrz
You may be "thinking backwards". If their language doesn't have this feature,
or their society these concepts...it's __because __they don 't really run into
these situations to the point that it becomes detrimental.

I don't know much about primitive tribes in the amazon, but I don't imagine
that their traditional lifestyle involves very large flocks of sheep.

My family bred dogs growing up so we always had a good number (~10) running
around. When I let them out and in, I don't recall ever counting but rather
ticking off names. Even then I don't think it was generally a conscious
listing, but rather a scanning and the ability to "feel" that someone was
missing.

For a very long time (well into adulthood) I had no concept of the proper
order of the months. I could recognize month names, and with great difficulty
name them all...but not their proper order. I had missed that section in
school and it never really came up. When it did it really blew peoples minds
for some reason. Eventually, I did come across it enough that I learned it.

I know nothing of the tribe in question but I don't think it's that much of a
stretch that if they have things like a communal attitude towards property,
few pieces of property they consider valuable, small flocks of livestock,
etc... the issue may simply never come up.

~~~
prof_hobart
> their language doesn't have this feature, or their society these
> concepts...it's because they don't really run into these situations to the
> point that it becomes detrimental.

Not necessarily. Just because something is detrimental, it doesn't mean that a
society will automatically come up with a solution for it. It took people in
the west millenia to come up with (or more accurately to be introduced to)
zero - and the entire arabic numeral way of counting. That's not because it
wouldn't have been useful before. It's simply that no one had figured out that
this is a better way to count than their existing representations.

>I don't know much about primitive tribes in the amazon, but I don't imagine
that their traditional lifestyle involves very large flocks of sheep.

You may well be right - I'm no expert in Amazonian culture, so I don't whether
they have flocks/herds/whatever of any particular animal. But that's just one
possible example. I struggle to believe that they've not got some situations
in their lives where numbers would be an advantage. Like I mentioned - it
could be counting animals, counting the number of bits of rotten wood that
might need to be replaced in their house, dividing a crop of fruits equally
between the tribe, or something entirely different. But the lack of numbers in
the language is no proof that there was no call for them.

