Friday, July 09, 2010

Counting in Piraha


I am often baffled by Mr. V's love of XKCD - it just leaves me cold most of the time - but today's cartoon is absolutely brilliant. (HT to Nate C-K for sending it to me.)

4 comments:

Adam Ussishkin said...

LOVE it.

Anonymous said...

I also love the remark from the Wikipedia Piraha Language article that one of the XKCD forumizers spotted:

"The controversy is compounded by the sheer difficulty of learning the language; the number of linguists with field experience in Pirahã can be counted on one hand, albeit not by the Pirahã themselves."

(Sadly, someone seems to have edited it out, though. Anyone want to add it back in?)

GamesWithWords said...

Except Piraha doesn't actually have words for "one" or "two" either. This sounds like more Munduruku!

Anonymous said...

Except Piraha doesn't actually have words for "one" or "two" either.

Except it does.