The Gugu Yemother people speak a language, which is also called Gugu Yomather, that is interesting and valuable in many ways,

but which is perhaps best known for two main global distinctions. The first is that it is the

source language for the word kangaroo, which refers to a specific type of kangaroo,

the eastern gray, which is itself, strangely, a large black type of kangaroo.

There's a commonly shared myth that the word kangaroo was an aboriginal word for the phrase,

I don't know. But this, though satisfying and funny, doesn't seem to be true.

The misunderstanding arose from Captain James Cook and his crew,

running through a rough word list that had been compiled by a botanist who had visited the area

18 years prior, and they were comparing that list with an Aboriginal local on a later visit.

And the word kangaroo stuck to all kangaroos because of that first documented on paper significance. They pointed at a gray

kangaroo and assumed that meant all such animals rather than just that one type of animal were kangaroos.

The other, somewhat famous attribute held by the Gugu Yamathir, language, is its use of of pure geographic positioning rather than egocentric positioning.

What that means in practice is that rather than saying something is left or right, in front or behind,

based on the perspective of oneself or potentially another person or location, you give directions based on

north, south, east, and west. You give absolute

directions, rather than directions based on a temporal, momentary, or subjective position.

Just how absolute this rule is within the language has been disputed since the concept was

first documented and studied, but this doesn't seem to be a

kangaroo situation. There is something here, and it's not a myth, even if it's not absolute.

The relevance of this linguistic difference either way is that it shows how subjective most other

languages that are alive today and those we know something about from the past tend to be in

terms of placing objects in space. We talk about locations in terms of other locations in terms of

...