The Austronesian peoples are traditionally known for their seafaring cultures and practices, and their expansion into the islands of the vast Pacific. With ocean currents, winds, ship building, and their knowledge of navigating using the stars, these practices particularly well documented amongst the Polynesian cultures have helped them make contact with almost every island in the Pacific Ocean. Other aspects one would associate with the Austronesian peoples would be living on islands, as many Austronesian languages are spoken on islands and archipelagos as opposed to continental landmasses.

With existing information concerning their navigation, wayfinding, and interactions with the environment, and no evidence of using a magnetism-based approach in navigation, I am particularly interested in understanding how geocentric orientation terms like cardinal directions would differ from those that much of the world’s most well-known languages might use. For reference, we generally split our cardinal directions into 4 terms, whether or not you refer to the true north (also known as geographic north) or the magnetic north. These are ‘north’, ‘south’, ‘east’, and ‘west’. Generally, without magnetic compasses, differentiating between geographic east and west would depend on the sun, while differentiating north would use the north star Polaris, while the south would use Crux or a similar constellation, if these could be seen. There are also wind directions or sea currents that may help in orientation as well, and perhaps, we might see some of these influencing the geocentric orientation vocabulary in these languages.

A large part of today’s introduction will focus on the Western Austronesian languages, spoken in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. It is perhaps interesting to note that linguists are not able to reconstruct a cardinal system amongst the Austronesian languages in the hypothetical Proto-Austronesian language, but more rather, a directional axis that reflects the insular environments which could influence the development of this proto-language. These terms are called *Daya and *laSud, and we would see some systems today that could trace their roots back to this very axis. In some languages though, these may be lost or replaced with other directional systems, which could reference fixed compass points or cardinal directions today.

Landward-Seaward

In this system, one axis is used that distinguishes a direction towards the coast or the sea from a direction further inland or towards a mountain. This axis runs orthogonal to the coast, and is the one which could trace its roots back to Proto-Austronesian reconstructions, *Daya and *LaSud, and in some Austronesian languages, we could find sound changes that could theoretically work back to these reconstructions. There are also some languages that could have landward-seaward terms that sound markedly different from these reconstructions, such as in the Kedang language in Pulau Lembata in Indonesia. Here, the landward-seaward terms translate to oli-owe.

The Balinese language also uses such an axis, defined as k-aja for landward, and ke-lod for seawards. The term k-aja also revolves around Gunung Agung, which has the highest point in the island of Bali. As such, Balinese speakers in the northern coast of the island could point towards the volcano to the south and call that direction k-aja, while Balinese speakers in the southern coast of the island could also point to that same volcano, this time to their north, and call that direction k-aja. Additionally, the Balinese language complements the landward-seaward axis with an axis that corresponds to the rising and setting of the sun, which could translate to ‘east’ and ‘west’. Here, this east-west axis would translate to k-angin/k-auh. Thus, in Balinese geocentric orientation systems, two axes are used, but only one is fixed.

Interestingly, we see the *Daya and *laSud terms resurface in the Malay language when we talk about directions like southwest (barat-daya) and northeast (timur-laut). However, the term for southeast, tenggara, derives from the Malayalam word for southeast, teṉkara or തെൻകര. This shows that the north-south axis used to involve the landward-seaward axis, but its use shifted towards utara-selatan, or north-south, as in Malay’s history, its cultural and political focus moved away from the island of Sumatra, and towards the Malay Peninsula. The shift towards a continental landmass instead of an island would make the landward-seaward axis somewhat inappropriate for this new environment, necessitating the use of utara-selatan, with selatan deriving from its reference to the Straits of Malacca that separate the Malay Peninsula from Sumatra, and utara deriving from Sanskrit.

Wind directions

The cardinal directions of Malay today use the north-south axis utara-selatan, and the east-west axis timur-barat. It turns out that the terms timur and barat traditionally referred to the directions of monsoon winds. The seasonal monsoon winds dominate in influencing the climate of Southeast Asia and South Asia, with terms that could be reconstructed for the hypothetical Proto-Malayo-Polynesian language. Here, the term for the northwest monsoon translates to *habaRat, while the term for the southeast monsoon translates to *timuR. In languages like Malay, these terms could be repurposed to become the east-west axis like they do today.

The Malagasy language spoken in Madagascar also used the monsoon wind system in their geocentric orientation terms, but replacing the landward-seaward axis. In this language, ‘north’ translates to avaratra, and ‘south’ translates to atsimo. However, for the terms for ‘east’ and ‘west’, atsinanana and andrefana respectively, I am unable to find a reliable etymology for these terms. Other geocentric orientation systems that derive from monsoon winds can be found in some languages of Polynesia and Melanesia as well.

Riverine

Rivers may also be used to derive terms to use as geocentric orientation terms. The most common terms would distinguish between upstream and downstream, although another axis may also be applied to refer to towards or away from the river. Sometimes, this would involve the repurposing of the landward-seaward axis into an upstream-downstream one, but this upstream-downstream axis may not necessarily be aligned with the landward-seaward axis. One such example is the Mansaka language spoken in Mindanao in the Philippines, where ‘downstream’ is lawud, while ‘upstream’ is agsaka.

The complementation of the upstream-downstream axis with the towards/away from river axis is particularly noted in the Ngaju language, a West Barito language spoken in Central Kalimantan in Indonesia. Here, there are actually two words for ‘upstream’ and downstream’ each, though only one of them is actually used to mark locations or used in locative functions, rather than as an adverb. These words are:

	Orientation term	Adverb
Upstream	ngaju	masuh
Downstream	ngawa	murik

In addition to this, Ngaju also has a towards/away from river axis, which are ngiwa and ngambu respectively.

Elevation

Interestingly, this orientation system is particularly common in some Oceanic languages, particularly in New Guinea, and even some Polynesian languages of Melanesian islands like New Caledonia and the Marquesas Islands. But unlike several other axes we have shown previously, and like the coastal system we will explore later, the use of elevation to orient oneself is a relative one, as it refers to a place that may be uphill or downhill from where the speaker is. This use of referring to places that are relative to the speaker in a certain context is known as spatial deixis. Spatial deixis is common amongst the world’s languages, but some Austronesian languages use such a deictic system to complement other systems of orientation terms. The Aralle-Tabulahan language spoken in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, is one example of a language that uses a mixed system, combining the deictic system of relative elevation with a riverine axis. However, the choice of systems used varies by context.

Comparing elevation can take place through two main systems of distinction — a high-low distinction, or a high-level-low distinction. Sometimes, you might find some languages that repurpose the landward-seaward system for an elevational system, or extend the meanings to those systems. For instance, in Southeast Sulawesi in Indonesia, the Tukang Besi language uses ito for ‘landwards’, ‘up’, and even ‘north-east’, and iwo for ‘seawards’, ‘down’, and ‘south-west’. However, the high-low distinction may also be heard in relatively flat areas, which could entail further nuances made in the social hierarchy or social side of things.

The Bantik language spoken in North Sulawesi also uses such as system, further distinguishing by locative, movement towards, and movement away from something (Utsumi, 2014):

Coastal

Another system that could be argued as a deictic system would be the coastal system, where the primary axis is defined as being parallel to the coast. These terms are mostly translated as ‘up’ and ‘down’, although they do not really translate to the vertical axis (think height and elevation). This axis may also be complemented with the landward-seaward axis, which lies orthogonal to the up/down the coast axis. As such, sometimes, when one talks of going to a certain Town A north of the speaker, they could say that ‘they are going down to Town A’, and conversely, for a certain Town B south of the speaker, they could say that ‘they are going up to Town B’. The languages that use this system are typically clustered in the Halmahera and Maluku islands in Indonesia.

Cardinal directions

Lastly, what happens when these spatial orientation terms become conventionalised? One implication of this is the development of a cardinal system, which is generally used on larger scales like a global one. This may result from the conventionalisation of previously discussed systems, which may be more preferentially used in a smaller scale (within-island level, between-island level). But how this conventionalisation process occurs could result in differing alignment systems in the cardinal directions between languages, with words like ‘seawards’ being conventionalised as ‘west’ in one language, but ‘south’ in another. A comparison one could make is that between the Makassarese, Bugis, and Sawai languages. This may also reflect the historic geography of major human settlements as well.

It must be noted that these systems of geocentric orientation systems are not unique to the Austronesian languages. Some indigenous languages of the Americas may also apply some form of systems discussed here, such as the Andoque language spoken in the Amazon in Colombia, which applies the upstream-downstream axis, and complements this with two deictic directional markers. It goes to show how interesting certain types or categories of words are in the world’s languages, such as those used in wayfinding and navigation. How we conceptualise space and our relation to space is still undergoing research, to understand how different systems form, and how it is acquired by younger speakers. There is also a map of the geographical distribution of these languages and their respective orientation systems on the linguist Gary Holton’s website, so check it out.

Further Reading

Gallego, M.K.S. (2018) ‘Directional systems in Philippine languages’, Oceanic Linguistics, 57(1), pp. 63–100.

Holton, G. (2017) ‘A unified system of spatial orientation in the Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages of Halmahera’, NUSA, 62, pp. 157–189.

Holton, G. & Pappas, L. (2019) ‘Spatial orientation in Western Austronesia’, Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics, Leiden.

Liebner, H. H. (2005) ‘Indigenous concepts of orientation of South Sulawesian sailors’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI), 161(2/3), pp. 269-317.

Ozanne-Rivierre, F. (2012) ‘Spatial orientation in some Austronesian languages’, Language Diversity and Cognitive Representations, 3, pp. 73-84.

Pappas, L. & Holton, G. (2022) ‘A quantitative approach to sociotopography in Austronesian languages’, Linguistics Vanguard, 8(1), pp. 11-23.

Utsumi, A. (2014) ‘Deixis and relative height terms in Bantik’, Deixis and spatial expression in languages of Indonesia, NUSA, 56, pp. 119-138.