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One, Two, Many - Language Shapes Thought
Chuck1318 writes "The Piraha tribe in the Amazon has only three words used in counting, that mean one, two, and many. A psychologist testing them has found that they are unable to accurately perform tasks involving quantities as few as four or five. He says that this shows that, at least for numbers, language shapes and limits how people can think." I can't help but be reminded of the gully dwarves from Dragonlance when reading this.
"One, Two, Many, Many-one, Many-two, Many-many, Lots!" -Detritus (might be in Guards! Guards!)
Karma: Good! Napster: Baad!
Or one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many-many, many-many-one...
It's its. They're their, there. You're your. Who's whose? A looser loser, though those two too threw through the trough.
> This idea has been around for a while, originally, insofar as I know, called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It's neat to see it strongly confirmed in some capacity, though.
Or do they lack the word because they never felt any need for it?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Crows can distinguish one, two, three, many. Crows are able to count hunters entering an area, unless you bring "many" people in, in which case the crows forget after a few of them leave, that there are more around.
Thank you, nameless Arabic and Central American mathematicians, for inventing the zero!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I haven't RTFA, but I wonder if they understand the notion of a 1-1 correspondence, or if they would be willing to trade 5-many apples for 3-many oranges.
There was a study to determine if ravens can count and apparently ravens can count to seven. While ravens are watching, a single researcher walks in to a hut stocked with food. Then after a short while he walks out and leaves the door open. After the researcher had left then a raven would fly in get some food and fly out. The experiment would then be repeated with the addition of one person through each iteration. The first person in the team opens the door and walks in; then a short while later each person in the group walks in one by one with a short time gap in between entries. Then they walk out one by one with a similar gap in time. The ravens successfully waited for the last one to come out until the total reached seven. Any number of researchers beyond could walk in to the hut but when the seventh one walked out a raven would try to fly in to the hut only to turn around and fly out after encountering people inside. Then on each successive exit (after the seventh one) the raven would try to enter the hut.
"they are unable to accurately perform tasks involving quantities as few as four or five"
Neither can my co-workers.