Do we really need West and South when we can use negative North and negative East?
Why do we have 2 separate words for good and bad? Good and ungood are totally sufficient.
Spin it further and get rid of “great” and “outstanding”. I suggest using plus good and double plus good.
That’s actually how it works in Irish. The word for good is deas, while the word for bad is deas prefixed with the negating particle mí, so mídheas.
(There are still separate words for tge cardinal directions).
Is it? I tried checking in a dictionary but it didn’t list mídheas as a word and “deas” was defined as right/nice/honest, not just “good”
The complement of good, u good, I cludes things that are neither good not bad (neutral)
Why do we have 26 letters? Why not just communicate in binary!
01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110110 01100101 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101110 01100001 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100001 01101100 00100001
On the other hand, 8000+ characters seems kinda fun…
握草泥马币
hint
The joke is “wo cao ni ma bi”, change the tones and you got 我操你妈逼 🤭
oh you salty dog you
…(🤷♂️)
55 73 65 20 68 65 78 20 66 6f 72 20 74 65 72 73 65 6e 65 73 73 20 62 72 75 68 0a 0a 41 6c 73 6f 20 74 68 69 73 20 69 73 20 73 74 69 6c 6c 20 61 73 73 75 6d 69 6e 67 20 55 54 46 2d 38 20 6f 72 20 61 74 20 6c 65 61 73 74 20 41 53 43 49 49 2c 20 73 6f 20 77 74 68 20 6c 6d 61 6f
Why do we have subtraction when we can just add a negative number?
Isn’t that exactly how computers work?
So you’d have states like North Dakota and Negative North Dakota?
The Negative shall rise again!
I would not be surprised compasses were invented before negative numbers
edit
negative numbers : 200 BCE
compasses : as early as 202 BCE(these are just from a cursory search, I am not a specialist)
This is just the Minecraft coordinates system and it sucks. “OK I’m at the coords, where’s the–oh fuck, it was -3002, 108 not 3002, 108.”
If the four cardinal points bother you, better not look up wind roses or rhumbline networks…
Mind officially blown. 🤯
“negative Eastern countries” has a nice ring to it.
How would that be any easier?
For most of human history people who couldn’t do math, or read, or understand a map, have been communicating directions to each other.
4 directions is just enough to tell someone which way to face, without being too many to remember.
without being too many to remember
People used to have no problem remembering the names of at least eight winds, depending on the direction…
Here are the ones used in Catalonia, for instance; we were taught them at school:
Though, to be fair, llevant means where the sun rises and ponent where it sets, migjorn means midday, which makes sense given the other two, and everyone already knew tramuntana, cause it’s a headache when it blows, so it’s mostly the other four we have to remember… the Greek one seems quite harder, though, then again, I’m not Greek…:
Sure, but 4 is easier to remember?
We just say “North-East” for gregal or “North, North-East” if it’s half between North and gregal. Other would be North-West, South-West, and South-East.
We used to say Boreas, Auster, Zephyr and Eurus
Sure, but that’s usually much less poetic, North by Northwest notwithstanding.
Do we really need West and South when we can use negative North and negative East?
Yes of course.
Otherwise I couldn’t say anymore: “I am looking North and my butt is looking South”.
And how would you even pronounce south-Southwest then? Impossible unless you are quite drunk!
/s
anti-north-northeast doesn’t sound unreasonable, but that’s being logical instead of just thinking about two directions, as written in text, as OP is
Try all the 16 possibilities and then see how many “antis” you really need there.
In all cases, 2 at most.
North
North-north-east
North-east
North-east-east
East
Anti-north-east-east
Anti-north-east
Anti-north-north-east (south-north-east is impossible so the second anti would be redundant)
Anti-north
Anti-east-anti-north-north (reversed word order to distinguish it further)
Anti-east-anti-north
Anti-east-east-anti-north
Anti-east
Anti-east-east-north
Anti-east-north
Anti-east-north-northAnti-north-north-east (south-north-east is impossible so the second anti would be redundant)
These extra complications make it even more unusable that the anti thing itself LOL
I was assuming a conlang situation where “north” referred more to the axis, rather than the direction.
Anti-north-north would be more “reversed-vertical-vertical” meaning it’s reversed vertical (south), and closer to the vertical axis than the horizontal axis. North would just be “vertical” without being reversed.
I don’t know what you are even talking about (and too lazy to put it into a translator now).
But I know that North and South are terms that must be usable for everybody. So, especially for such people who don’t know what you are even talking about.
Essentially: it’s not designed as a change from North/East/South/West, it’s designed as a from-scratch way to refer to those directions.
The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, so let’s say East is “Sun” and West is “Setting-Sun.”
Polaris/The North Star is in the North, so let’s call that direction “Star” and the other direction “No-Star.”
When you say “Setting-Sun-Sun-Star,” you’re saying the direction is more similar to the path the sun takes through the sky than it is to the North Star, and in the direction the sun sets.
16 directions is pretty arbitrary anyway though, usually 8 is enough and then you don’t have the confusion of repeated words.
Your new username is -South -East Wind lmao
I think the idea of directions came before the idea of negative.
Walking backward is just walking negatively forward by another name
Just guessing here, but I would think it’s for for clarity and brevity. West and South are shorter to say and distinct enough to avoid being easily misheard causing somebody to go in the opposite direction than intended.
Left and Minusleft
Exactly, we don’t need to be right at all.
Clockwise and anticounterclockwise
Double plus ungood
I dunno. That seems double plus ungood to me.
Plus and minusplus
