『日本を守るのに右も左もない』というタイトルのトンデモblogがあったのだった*1。右も左もない、ワシはアホや！ と自慢していた奴もいなかったっけ？
語彙の中に左右という範疇を持たない言語の話。
David Bellos Is That a Fish in Your Ear?*2から；
(…) Imagine a language in which there is no term for 'left' and 'right', but only expressions for laterality cast in terms of cardinal orientation. 'There's a fly on your south-west leg' might mean 'left' or 'right', depending on which way the speaker and his interlocutor are facing. (This is less unfamiliar than it first sounds: in contemporary Manhattanese we use cardinal orientation whenever we say 'go uptown from here'. To the dismay of many a lost tourist, that can't be translated into tournez a gauche or a droite unless you also know which of the four cardinal points you are facing.) Speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre (Cape York, Austlaria), for example, lay out ordered sets (say, numbers from 1 to 10, or photographs of faces aged from babyhood to maturity)not from 'left' to 'right' or the other way round, but starting from east –wherever east happens to be with respect to the table at which their anthropological linguist interrogator is seated*3. (p.163)
Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: The Amazing Adventure of Translation
- 作者: David Bellos
- 出版社/メーカー: Particular Books
- 発売日: 2012/09/06
- メディア: ペーパーバック
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