A hoi there

[robinturner]

Lynne Taggart writes "the Piraha people use the same word ‘hoi’ to describe ‘about one’ and ‘about two’; the only difference is a subtle alteration in inflection of pronunciation." Now Piraha mathematics is a subject of much learned debate (as well as the lack of recursiveness in their language, which is much more interesting) but surely this is like saying "the Chinese people use the same word ‘ma’ to describe a horse and a mother; the only difference is a subtle alteration in inflection of pronunciation."

Comments

[trochee.livejournal.com]

haha. oy.

"the difference between 'tonal' and 'atonal' is a small variation in laryngeal activity"

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Mmmmyes, but it's a lot easier to confuse "about one" and "about two" as they're likely to occupy extremely similar conceptual spaces in statements. "Horse" and "mother", for the most part, probably aren't.

Add to this the fairly large mental division we tend to put between one and two in our society - Valentine's day retailers and the entire gay-marriage debate could certainly weigh in here - and I can see why it would be a point of sufficient interest to merit mention.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Worth mentioning, but not without further explanation or qualification; otherwise, we get into "Eskimos have a hundred words for snow" territory.

I don't know a lot about Piraha (just went to one seminar on it, and that was held by a philosopher, not a linguist) but I gather that intonation and stress are incredibly important, to the extent that the language can be "spoken" by humming. If this is true, then "a subtle alteration in inflection of pronunciation" probably wouldn't be that subtle to them—certainly no more subtle than the difference between "million" and "billion".

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

The difference between "uh huh" and "uh uh" is pretty trivial too - just the "h" sound and the intonation, to get an opposite meaning in what your friend above referred to as an extremely similar conceptual space.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

oo, good comparison.