| There have long been urban legends about (normally isolated) tribes who speak languages that do not have the concept of numbers beyond a very small number (normally four or five). The famous writer of short stories Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short story (``Brodie's Report'') about such a tribe (which he called the Yahoos).
According to an article in Science Magazine, it seems that the small Piraha tribe do actually speak such a language. According to Dr Daniel L. Everett, who has studied the tribe intensively, they do not have a counting system at all, and find it difficult to match objects in numbers greater than about 2 or 3.
More details are available at Everett's website and at the website of Peter Gordon, a co-worker of Everett's.
There is some related discussion on various blogs.
Update [2004-9-2 2:11:5 by overconvergent]: The author of the paper is quoted here. |
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