grump

[gfish]

Who else gets slightly annoyed when people don't use the correct map-relative direction (up->north, down->south, over->east/west) when talking about large-scale geography? From Seattle I can head up to Vancouver, down to Portland, or over to Spokane. Period.

Comments

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

What about up/down[-hill], either on the local gradient or absolute altitude? Would you really head down to Rainier or Everest?

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

(or over to Broadway from downtown?)

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Down to the high plains? Up to the coast? Down to the continental divide?

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Conversely, I guess I *would* head over to Denver...

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

When I lived in Leadville, it was absolutely *down* to Denver, even though Leadville is south of Denver, but a mile higher. When I lived in Loveland, it was down to Denver, too, since Loveland is at the same elevation but directly north. But from Portland or Boise it was *up* to Denver, and I'm not quite sure the justification.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I think the Z-axis displacement has to be very pronounced before I would switch to that. Usually that would mean a very local scale, up to Broadway from downtown etc. Even Everest would be down, I think, if I was more than a few hundred miles to the north. That might change if I was actually climbing it, though, as the vast bulk of the journey in terms of time and effort would be in the upping. Hrm.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Also, what of "just down the street"? Especially on a one-way street? Or for values of street equal to river or other navigable body of water?

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

down to Rainier, but up Rainier.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

I once really pissed someone off by using them - huge crazy rant about how arrogant Canadians are calling US "down." Whee!

I don't feel very strongly about it, but I have been very charmed on the couple of occasions I've heard Australian visitors use the inverse convention. <3

[tithonium.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't agree with the canadian point of view, per se, but I certainly would argue that the up/north down/south view IS extremely northern-hemisphere-centric and a byproduct of eurasian colonialism. If we'd learned in school about how Washington crossed the Amazon to fight the redcoats and throw off the yolk of Australian oppression, we'd be talking about up/south and down/north.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Confusingly, in the UK, wherever you start from, it's always Up to London. (Blame the railways.) And of course you can also go Up to Oxford and Cambridge, and Down when leaving, regardless of your final destination.

It's not helped by North not being quite where we think it is, on our main landmass.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

I believe Israel is also "up" if you're Jewish.

[cow.livejournal.com]

As already mentioned, if there's a reasonable z axis involved, I use up and down that way. So I live south of where I work, but I head up go to get home, since I work at sea level and live at the top of a hill.

[jedi-iwakura.livejournal.com]

LOL

[maida-mac.livejournal.com]

Yes. The exception is when talking about going anywhere from the town that I grew up in. From there, you go "down below" (out of the mountains), no matter where you're going.

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Almost related: Mongolian's words for left and right are backwards relative to east and west to map directions, since gers face south and thus south is conflated with forward. So left is east and right is west.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Couldn't this also be related to directionality of written language, since Chinese is written right to left?

[caladri.livejournal.com]

I'm not hypothesizing — that's the way that orientation is in Mongolian. Hand directions are variants (right hand is the west hand) of cardinal directions given as though one is facing out from the entrance of a ger.

Moreover, direction of writing shouldn't interfere with left and right in a non-writing context. It's not like there is some innate sense of left and right that right-to-left writing systems recognize as being backwards. So that would only matter if written documents were perceived as having their top facing north and their face facing up, which seems unlikely.

But mostly it couldn't be related since Mongolians aren't Chinese and the Mongolian language doesn't use the Han Chinese writing system, even in the Mongolian regions within China. Well, I can't say for all Mongol ethnic groups. Certainly there are some places which retain very old dialects from when Mongolian had a major influence on the language of the Han Chinese, and those people are likely to use the Han Chinese script, but I don't know what type of orientation their languages use.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Got it, thanks. I had forgotten was a ger was, despite having a friend who has made several yurts.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Crossing water is "out" (to sea) and then "in" (to port).

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Also, in the US, it's "out" West and "back" East. Not sure about Canada.

[pielology.livejournal.com]

Unless you're in Maine, where it's "down east".

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

It drives me nuts in astronomy when I ask a student to point north and they point up!

Or even worse, I get confused by left and right, so when I ask directions I ask for north, south, east and west directions. Some people will simply substitute east for right and west for left, whichever direction you are going.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I blame GPS systems which rotate the map as you drive, ugh. How can you know where you are if the direction of north keeps changing?

Fundamentally, of course, map-reading and innate sense of direction as common skills are going to die out over the next generation. Which I understand, but I just can't not think of the world in terms of my position on a map.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I have great difficulty comprehending verbal directions without a map in front of me.

[pielology.livejournal.com]

I think this kind of variation in usage is fascinating and harrumph on your notion of a "correct" relative direction.

I head out to Spokane, since it's less of an urban core than Seattle. When I lived in Iowa, I would drive "in" to Chicago. I might be introspecting wrong here, but I can't think of any instances in which I would say "over" for a large-scale trip. Maybe if I were crossing an ocean or something, or it was a trip I made frequently/casually.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I'll take 'out' for Spokane, sure. I should have specified that, in that case, I only categorically reject 'up' or 'down'.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Down is toward the sun, wherever it may be.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Actually, I believe the enemy's gate is down.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

The server is down.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Your mom is down.

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

It is probably best I never show you a world map I bought in New Zealand.

tangentially, on spatial metaphors

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuXd3Qclka8

[zzyzx-xyzzy.livejournal.com]

the notion of a "correct" map-relative direction actually undermines the entire purpose and utility of maps, by falsely identifying the representation with the represented.

or as pylyshyn points out, the signature property of representations is the possibility of their misrepresenting, and a layout can only be a "map" if it is interpreted by some process that allows for the possibility of a misinterpretation.

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Depends upon the reason for the terminology. Here in Massachusetts, there's an old tradition of referring to Maine as Down East, because the prevailing winds will blow one up the coast (hence, down wind) and as one goes down wind one travels quite a bit east as well as north.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

When I'm at sea level, "inland" is "up" sometimes.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I've been told that there is at least an understanding of polar notation in Hawaii, where people refer to up/down and clockwise/counterclockwise for providing directions, since every island is a big mountain.
But with that said, nobody I've met there actually seems to *do* that. They just talk about doing it.

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Well, I have heard folks there use the terms mauka and makai, which I believe mean towards the mountain and towards the sea, respectively, though I may have that flipped. It's been a while.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I got a huge book of historic maps for Christmas. One of the many things I found interesting was the presumption that east was up on most maps until the 17th century, based upon a tradition of drawing Paradise at the top, Eden right below it, Jerusalem in the center, and the Mediterranean heading downwards from Jerusalem.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I do, but you're well aware that I'm anal. You might want to start worrying about yourself now.

[maellenkleth]

Oh, 'inbound' and 'outbound' in the case of Boston (from any direction), given that the major roads are disposed in a wheel-spoke pattern. And in Vancouver (the real Vancouver, not that piddly-assed Columbian version), way too many busses simply announce themselves as 'downtown' without clear explication of route.