When it comes to directions it’s not just a matter of adding additional words. Additional words are cheap and can easily be burrowed from other languages when they are useful.
Systematization isn’t cheap. If we would have a separate independent word for every number, doing math would be really hard. Through supporting the decimal system for numbers on a ground level in language it’s possible to express complex meaning. Answering “what’s twenty-two plus twenty-four?” would be a lot harder when the involved numbers would have their own words.
You likely want to have a way where you both specify somehow the angle and the reference.
xxxaaa → right
xxxbbb → east
yyyaaa → left
yyybbb → North
In this case the aaa stem might be something like “me” if I speak about right/left from me and “you” for right/left of you. “bbb” can be a stem for earth. Having it like this means that a language learner doesn’t need to learn additional new words for every cardinal direction but can simply use the concepts from the domain of normal directions to cardinal directions.
If you have something like this with more then just xxx/yyy but choices for all directions and you say want to speak about politics instead of a one dimensional left/right two dimensional way, you can easily reuse the existing concepts.
That means that if you have the authoritarian/libertarian as generally accepted as the up and down axis you can say “authoritarian left wing” with the same complexity as we can say left-wing today.
xxxbbb should probably be south and cccaaa forward and cccbbb east. The idea of having bases would probably lead to better handle the difference between concepts like port and left. Althought it feels like the basis part would be in danger of being omitted.
When it comes to directions it’s not just a matter of adding additional words. Additional words are cheap and can easily be burrowed from other languages when they are useful.
Systematization isn’t cheap. If we would have a separate independent word for every number, doing math would be really hard. Through supporting the decimal system for numbers on a ground level in language it’s possible to express complex meaning. Answering “what’s twenty-two plus twenty-four?” would be a lot harder when the involved numbers would have their own words.
You likely want to have a way where you both specify somehow the angle and the reference.
xxxaaa → right
xxxbbb → east
yyyaaa → left
yyybbb → North
In this case the aaa stem might be something like “me” if I speak about right/left from me and “you” for right/left of you. “bbb” can be a stem for earth. Having it like this means that a language learner doesn’t need to learn additional new words for every cardinal direction but can simply use the concepts from the domain of normal directions to cardinal directions.
If you have something like this with more then just xxx/yyy but choices for all directions and you say want to speak about politics instead of a one dimensional left/right two dimensional way, you can easily reuse the existing concepts.
That means that if you have the authoritarian/libertarian as generally accepted as the up and down axis you can say “authoritarian left wing” with the same complexity as we can say left-wing today.
xxxbbb should probably be south and cccaaa forward and cccbbb east. The idea of having bases would probably lead to better handle the difference between concepts like port and left. Althought it feels like the basis part would be in danger of being omitted.