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Assignment 2: Loopy Turtles, Loopy Languages
Learning Objectives:
● Reflect on languages in general, both natural and artificial
● Reflect on how your language impacts your thinking
● Practice using loops in Python
● Practice using the Turtle library
Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
Read the following excerpt from "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?"1 by Guy
Deutscher, NYTimes, 8/26/2010
...
The area where the most striking evidence for the influence of language on thought has
come to light is the language of space — how we describe the orientation of the world
around us. Suppose you want to give someone directions for getting to your house. You
might say: “After the traffic lights, take the first left, then the second right, and then
you’ll see a white house in front of you. Our door is on the right.” But in theory, you
could also say: “After the traffic lights, drive north, and then on the second crossing
drive east, and you’ll see a white house directly to the east. Ours is the southern door.”
These two sets of directions may describe the same route, but they rely on different
systems of coordinates. The first uses egocentric coordinates, which depend on our own
bodies: a left-right axis and a front-back axis orthogonal to it. The second system uses
fixed geographic directions, which do not rotate with us wherever we turn.
We find it useful to use geographic directions when hiking in the open countryside, for
example, but the egocentric coordinates completely dominate our speech when we
describe small-scale spaces. We don’t say: “When you get out of the elevator, walk
south, and then take the second door to the east.” The reason the egocentric system is
so dominant in our language is that it feels so much easier and more natural. After all,
we always know where “behind” or “in front of” us is. We don’t need a map or a compass to work it out, we just feel it, because the egocentric coordinates are based
directly on our own bodies and our immediate visual fields.
But then a remote Australian aboriginal tongue, Guugu Yimithirr, from north
Queensland, turned up, and with it came the astounding realization that not all
languages conform to what we have always taken as simply “natural.” In fact, Guugu
Yimithirr doesn’t make any use of egocentric coordinates at all. The anthropologist
John Haviland and later the linguist Stephen Levinson have shown that Guugu
Yimithirr does not use words like “left” or “right,” “in front of” or “behind,” to
describe the position of objects. Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the
Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car
seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they
left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western
table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.”
Even when shown a film on television, they gave descriptions of it based on the
orientation of the screen. If the television was facing north, and a man on the screen
was approaching, they said that he was “coming northward.”
When these peculiarities of Guugu Yimithirr were uncovered, they inspired a
large-scale research project into the language of space. And as it happens, Guugu
Yimithirr is not a freak occurrence; languages that rely primarily on geographical
coordinates are scattered around the world, from Polynesia to Mexico, from Namibia to
Bali. For us, it might seem the height of absurdity for a dance teacher to say, “Now
raise your north hand and move your south leg eastward.” But the joke would be lost on
some: the Canadian-American musicologist Colin McPhee, who spent several years on
Bali in the 1930s, recalls a young boy who showed great talent for dancing. As there
was no instructor in the child’s village, McPhee arranged for him to stay with a teacher
in a different village. But when he came to check on the boy’s progress after a few
days, he found the boy dejected and the teacher exasperated. It was impossible to teach
the boy anything, because he simply did not understand any of the instructions. When
told to take “three steps east” or “bend southwest,” he didn’t know what to do. The boy
would not have had the least trouble with these directions in his own village, but
because the landscape in the new village was entirely unfamiliar, he became disoriented
and confused. Why didn’t the teacher use different instructions? He would probably
have replied that saying “take three steps forward” or “bend backward” would be the
height of absurdity.
So different languages certainly make us speak about space in very different ways. But
does this necessarily mean that we have to think about space differently? By now red
lights should be flashing, because even if a language doesn’t have a word for “behind,”
this doesn’t necessarily mean that its speakers wouldn’t be able to understand this
concept. Instead, we should look for the possible consequences of what geographic
languages oblige their speakers to convey. In particular, we should be on the lookout for what habits of mind might develop because of the necessity of specifying
geographic directions all the time.
In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the
cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to have
a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks
or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic
information or understand what people around you are saying. Indeed, speakers of
geographic languages seem to have an almost-superhuman sense of orientation.
Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on
an open plain, whether outside or indoors or even in caves, whether stationary or
moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction. They don’t look at the sun and pause
for a moment of calculation before they say, “There’s an ant just north of your foot.”
They simply feel where north, south, west and east are, just as people with perfect pitch
feel what each note is without having to calculate intervals. There is a wealth of stories
about what to us may seem like incredible feats of orientation but for speakers of
geographic languages are just a matter of course. One report relates how a speaker of
Tzeltal from southern Mexico was blindfolded and spun around more than 20 times in a
darkened house. Still blindfolded and dizzy, he pointed without hesitation at the
geographic directions.
How does this work? The convention of communicating with geographic coordinates
compels speakers from the youngest age to pay attention to the clues from the physical
environment (the position of the sun, wind and so on) every second of their lives, and
to develop an accurate memory of their own changing orientations at any given
moment. So everyday communication in a geographic language provides the most
intense imaginable drilling in geographic orientation (it has been estimated that as
much as 1 word in 10 in a normal Guugu Yimithirr conversation is “north,” “south,”
“west” or “east,” often accompanied by precise hand gestures). This habit of constant
awareness to the geographic direction is inculcated almost from infancy: studies have
shown that children in such societies start using geographic directions as early as age 2
and fully master the system by 7 or 8. With such an early and intense drilling, the habit
soon becomes second nature, effortless and unconscious. When Guugu Yimithirr
speakers were asked how they knew where north is, they couldn’t explain it any more
than you can explain how you know where “behind” is.
Now, provide thoughtful responses to the following prompts. You only need write a paragraph of
3-5 sentences or more for each. The goal is that your response shows you have thought about
the article and added your own experience or insights to its ideas.
1. Have there been moments in which you felt that your language or a language "got in the
way" of something you wanted to express? That is, have you run into the limitations of
language in the manner suggested by the excerpt? Elaborate
2. Discuss to what extent you think artificial languages (such as Python) have the ability to
shape human thought, if at all. Or, do you think artificial languages are fundamentally
different from human ones, such as Guugu Yimithirr or English?
Your response to the reading:
1. I once was trying to explain a specific part of a song to a friend. I have a lot of experience
with music and the language behind it. My friend had zero experience. In my brain everything
made sense, but to him, he had no idea what I was saying. There was a huge barrier between
what I wanted to explain, and what he was able to understand.
2. I believe that artificial languages are an extension of our own language. This is sort of like
how math has their own words to describe things specifically in math, that have different
meanings outside a conversations about math. This same idea can be applied to artificial
languages. If you just look at a piece of code without knowing anything about any coding
languages, you will be lost, and it won’t make any sense to you. However, if you take the time
to learn the language of coding, you begin to understand very quickly that a lot of what the
code is, is just regular english sentences presented in a different way. This is just like in math
when you start using english words for different purposes that only pertain to math concepts.
Loopy Turtles
Now let’s explore some code. Here are a few examples of Python code which uses the turtle
library and loops.
● t2_turtle_spiral.py
● a2_turtle_house.py
● a2_think_cs.py
(this last example has a number of new, not-yet-covered concepts. Don’t be surprised if
you don’t know what everything is in this file.)
Create a new Python program either by modifying the code above or writing brand new code
that has the following features:
1. Your program uses the Turtle library to draw on the screen.
2. What you draw is something that brings a smile to your face.
3. The program uses at least one loop.
4. The program makes use of multiple attributes and methods of either the turtle class, the
screen class, or both.5. Your program has the standard header block used in all our programs.
6. Any lines that are doing something that is not immediately clear, add comments to clarify
your intent
● Reflect on languages in general, both natural and artificial
● Reflect on how your language impacts your thinking
● Practice using loops in Python
● Practice using the Turtle library
Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
Read the following excerpt from "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?"1 by Guy
Deutscher, NYTimes, 8/26/2010
...
The area where the most striking evidence for the influence of language on thought has
come to light is the language of space — how we describe the orientation of the world
around us. Suppose you want to give someone directions for getting to your house. You
might say: “After the traffic lights, take the first left, then the second right, and then
you’ll see a white house in front of you. Our door is on the right.” But in theory, you
could also say: “After the traffic lights, drive north, and then on the second crossing
drive east, and you’ll see a white house directly to the east. Ours is the southern door.”
These two sets of directions may describe the same route, but they rely on different
systems of coordinates. The first uses egocentric coordinates, which depend on our own
bodies: a left-right axis and a front-back axis orthogonal to it. The second system uses
fixed geographic directions, which do not rotate with us wherever we turn.
We find it useful to use geographic directions when hiking in the open countryside, for
example, but the egocentric coordinates completely dominate our speech when we
describe small-scale spaces. We don’t say: “When you get out of the elevator, walk
south, and then take the second door to the east.” The reason the egocentric system is
so dominant in our language is that it feels so much easier and more natural. After all,
we always know where “behind” or “in front of” us is. We don’t need a map or a compass to work it out, we just feel it, because the egocentric coordinates are based
directly on our own bodies and our immediate visual fields.
But then a remote Australian aboriginal tongue, Guugu Yimithirr, from north
Queensland, turned up, and with it came the astounding realization that not all
languages conform to what we have always taken as simply “natural.” In fact, Guugu
Yimithirr doesn’t make any use of egocentric coordinates at all. The anthropologist
John Haviland and later the linguist Stephen Levinson have shown that Guugu
Yimithirr does not use words like “left” or “right,” “in front of” or “behind,” to
describe the position of objects. Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the
Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car
seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they
left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western
table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.”
Even when shown a film on television, they gave descriptions of it based on the
orientation of the screen. If the television was facing north, and a man on the screen
was approaching, they said that he was “coming northward.”
When these peculiarities of Guugu Yimithirr were uncovered, they inspired a
large-scale research project into the language of space. And as it happens, Guugu
Yimithirr is not a freak occurrence; languages that rely primarily on geographical
coordinates are scattered around the world, from Polynesia to Mexico, from Namibia to
Bali. For us, it might seem the height of absurdity for a dance teacher to say, “Now
raise your north hand and move your south leg eastward.” But the joke would be lost on
some: the Canadian-American musicologist Colin McPhee, who spent several years on
Bali in the 1930s, recalls a young boy who showed great talent for dancing. As there
was no instructor in the child’s village, McPhee arranged for him to stay with a teacher
in a different village. But when he came to check on the boy’s progress after a few
days, he found the boy dejected and the teacher exasperated. It was impossible to teach
the boy anything, because he simply did not understand any of the instructions. When
told to take “three steps east” or “bend southwest,” he didn’t know what to do. The boy
would not have had the least trouble with these directions in his own village, but
because the landscape in the new village was entirely unfamiliar, he became disoriented
and confused. Why didn’t the teacher use different instructions? He would probably
have replied that saying “take three steps forward” or “bend backward” would be the
height of absurdity.
So different languages certainly make us speak about space in very different ways. But
does this necessarily mean that we have to think about space differently? By now red
lights should be flashing, because even if a language doesn’t have a word for “behind,”
this doesn’t necessarily mean that its speakers wouldn’t be able to understand this
concept. Instead, we should look for the possible consequences of what geographic
languages oblige their speakers to convey. In particular, we should be on the lookout for what habits of mind might develop because of the necessity of specifying
geographic directions all the time.
In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the
cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to have
a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks
or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic
information or understand what people around you are saying. Indeed, speakers of
geographic languages seem to have an almost-superhuman sense of orientation.
Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on
an open plain, whether outside or indoors or even in caves, whether stationary or
moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction. They don’t look at the sun and pause
for a moment of calculation before they say, “There’s an ant just north of your foot.”
They simply feel where north, south, west and east are, just as people with perfect pitch
feel what each note is without having to calculate intervals. There is a wealth of stories
about what to us may seem like incredible feats of orientation but for speakers of
geographic languages are just a matter of course. One report relates how a speaker of
Tzeltal from southern Mexico was blindfolded and spun around more than 20 times in a
darkened house. Still blindfolded and dizzy, he pointed without hesitation at the
geographic directions.
How does this work? The convention of communicating with geographic coordinates
compels speakers from the youngest age to pay attention to the clues from the physical
environment (the position of the sun, wind and so on) every second of their lives, and
to develop an accurate memory of their own changing orientations at any given
moment. So everyday communication in a geographic language provides the most
intense imaginable drilling in geographic orientation (it has been estimated that as
much as 1 word in 10 in a normal Guugu Yimithirr conversation is “north,” “south,”
“west” or “east,” often accompanied by precise hand gestures). This habit of constant
awareness to the geographic direction is inculcated almost from infancy: studies have
shown that children in such societies start using geographic directions as early as age 2
and fully master the system by 7 or 8. With such an early and intense drilling, the habit
soon becomes second nature, effortless and unconscious. When Guugu Yimithirr
speakers were asked how they knew where north is, they couldn’t explain it any more
than you can explain how you know where “behind” is.
Now, provide thoughtful responses to the following prompts. You only need write a paragraph of
3-5 sentences or more for each. The goal is that your response shows you have thought about
the article and added your own experience or insights to its ideas.
1. Have there been moments in which you felt that your language or a language "got in the
way" of something you wanted to express? That is, have you run into the limitations of
language in the manner suggested by the excerpt? Elaborate
2. Discuss to what extent you think artificial languages (such as Python) have the ability to
shape human thought, if at all. Or, do you think artificial languages are fundamentally
different from human ones, such as Guugu Yimithirr or English?
Your response to the reading:
1. I once was trying to explain a specific part of a song to a friend. I have a lot of experience
with music and the language behind it. My friend had zero experience. In my brain everything
made sense, but to him, he had no idea what I was saying. There was a huge barrier between
what I wanted to explain, and what he was able to understand.
2. I believe that artificial languages are an extension of our own language. This is sort of like
how math has their own words to describe things specifically in math, that have different
meanings outside a conversations about math. This same idea can be applied to artificial
languages. If you just look at a piece of code without knowing anything about any coding
languages, you will be lost, and it won’t make any sense to you. However, if you take the time
to learn the language of coding, you begin to understand very quickly that a lot of what the
code is, is just regular english sentences presented in a different way. This is just like in math
when you start using english words for different purposes that only pertain to math concepts.
Loopy Turtles
Now let’s explore some code. Here are a few examples of Python code which uses the turtle
library and loops.
● t2_turtle_spiral.py
● a2_turtle_house.py
● a2_think_cs.py
(this last example has a number of new, not-yet-covered concepts. Don’t be surprised if
you don’t know what everything is in this file.)
Create a new Python program either by modifying the code above or writing brand new code
that has the following features:
1. Your program uses the Turtle library to draw on the screen.
2. What you draw is something that brings a smile to your face.
3. The program uses at least one loop.
4. The program makes use of multiple attributes and methods of either the turtle class, the
screen class, or both.5. Your program has the standard header block used in all our programs.
6. Any lines that are doing something that is not immediately clear, add comments to clarify
your intent
1 file (157.1KB)
