And some languages don’t even have relative directions—there is no left, right, in front of, etc. They use cardinal directions instead, so instead of “Pat is the one sitting left of me” it would be “Pat is the one sitting south of me”.
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Some time ago I read this book on linguistics which discusses (among other topics) languages which have only left-right coordinate systems in their vocabulary, or alternatively languages which rely exclusively on n-s-e-w in their vocabulary, with no left-right reference at all.
I’m more of a left- right guy myself.
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I am not; I am right-handed, though that would be cool. I do have specific tasks I’ve become accustomed to doing left handed, especially this past year when my right shoulder/rotor cuff was goofed up. After experimenting with various vitamin supplements for bone-joint health is it starting to get better. The thing that seems to finally have worked (or is just the last one I tried and they all contributed) is hyaluronic acid, which does lots of things but is also apparently the “goo” that your body creates to lubricate cartilage in your joints that may be in lesser supply as we age.
What the east-west feels like to me - imagine if your brain went by Inform 7 rules. Some novice coder accidentally mapped east and west the wrong way in a rule, figured it out, and instead of deleting the incorrect rule, they added another rule to map it correctly afterward. So it’s like when my body “follows the directional rulebook” my brain reverses east/west for a second until it hits the second rule. If I “continue the action” in the first wrong rule before the second one fires, that’s when I have problems! 
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I confuse them all the time. It is somewhat embarrasing in my parser transcripts bc half the moves are me going
> w
(Shit)
> e
> e
Repeatedly.
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Yep! That’s exactly the same here! 
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This too!
This entire thread is cathartic for me, I thought I was the only one!
Even though I know it’s wrong, on first glance it feels more correct like this…
N
E W
S
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IIRC, this was used in some old C&VG issues to head the adventure news column, styled as a compass rose. Unfortunately, a brief look through some scans failed to confirm it…
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Aster and Adam, you can say if is a mental or a physical confusion ?
I mean, physical confusion is when the fingers hit the adjacent key, that is commonly known as “typo”…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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I have got some comments from author after reading my transcripts questioning if I draw a map or not when playing. All of you knows by now that I draw a map everytime when playing a game, but I often miss e/w.
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Mental for sure.
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I just want to point out that “east” and “west,” spelling-wise, only differ from each other by one letter.
I didn’t realize this until I started learning Spanish and found the Spanish words for these directions confusingly similar–“este” and “oeste.” Made me look at “east” and “west” with new eyes.
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“Oeste” is west in Spanish, but “Ost” is east in German.
In Mary Gentle’s Rats and Gargoyles, which takes place in a city with hyperbolic geometry, the five cardinal directions are north, south, east, west, and aust. “Aust” being nicely balanced between all possible cognates – plus “australis”, southerly, to boot.
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The British magazine Your Computer used to spell out “NEWS” with the compass directions in their “Quest Corner” adventure games column. They didn’t use a compass rose, though.
And because I was young and stupid, for the longest time I kept reading the introduction as “Lost? Never fear, Hugo! North is here.” It wasn’t until later that I realized that the guy’s name was Hugo North.
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Holy revelation, BatMan, I think I might have figured it out.
N
W E
S
My normal “list” to say cardinals and the order I think of them in is always “north, south, east, west”. It’s easiest for me to remember them in that order, rather than say “north, west, east, south”. (“west east” doesn’t feel as good diction-wise as “east west” - “t'east” vs “twest” sounds.) Similarly; “up down left right”
What I realized today is when you “cross yourself” in church (at least in Lutheran school and the occasions I’ve attended) “father, son, holy ghost” you touch your forehead, your … bellybutton, then your left shoulder then your right shoulder.
father
holy ghost
son
1 up north
3 4 left right east(?) west(?)
2 down south
If you associate crossing yourself while looking at a compass rose when you do this and saying “north, south, east, west” … east maps to the left incorrectly.
I totally bet at some point my young brain in the course of learning maps went “oh, I can remember directions like crossing yourself” and I went up-down-left-right and associated north-south-east/left-west/right incorrectly in my head.
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I must be mis-remembering the Your Computer column and not the C&VG one, I was reading both at the time. I looked at about 30 C&VG scans yesterday, obviously without luck, before thinking it might have been YC but it was getting late, so I only browsed 2-3 issues. Thanks for saving me a lot of time tonight…
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I’ve had my occasional slips, but E/W is the bane of my best friend, who doesn’t play much IF outside of testing my games—they often consistently get the two mixed up several times in a row.
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What do you do if you hold your hands out with the palms facing inward (toward yourself)?
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That’s never been an issue for me. For all that I’m directionally challenged, I think I have “front of hand” vs. “back of hand” down.
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(joking) Christianity strikes again!
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Then you’re determining which way is Left in Australia. 
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