IIRC Oliver Sacks was interested in this kind of thing. Think there's an episode of Radiolab where he talks about how ho used to carry around a couple of extremely strong, oblong magnets in his pockets that would stay oriented north even while he moved around. He wanted to see if his brain could learn to make sense of the input and develop a new sense, akin to the magnetic navigation that retain birds have. Not sure if he ever developed the new sense but the comments here suggest that he might have been able to.
Another fun fact: evidently, one third of Earth's languages (not one third of speakers mind you) do not have words for "left" and "right" and instead use cardinal terms for everything. Speakers of such languages presumably then must know their orientation at all times.
Earth's magnetic field is way too small to orient magnets in someone's pocket. The level of friction is substantial! For example: Even the strongest rare earth magnets do not self-orient when sitting on a table. There's a reason compasses require very-low friction bearings (either needle point or water).
In Hawaii people still use "mauka" (towards the mountains) and "makai" (towards the ocean) to describe where they are, so you might say, "it's on the makai side of downtown," to describe an area or, "go mauka from the intersection" to indicate a directional vector. They also use "windward" and "leeward" to describe sides of the island sometimes, and will give you directions from local landmarks (Zippy's is a good one, everyone tends to know where those are, or they can see the orange sign easily) to other locations.
There was an article posted here not too long ago which talked about decoding an old Polynesian map, which the sailors used to navigate between islands in the pacific, and it turned out to be similarly situational - the map wasn’t useful for telling objectively how far you were from one place to another, but it was very useful for navigating from one spot to another based on references to what you could see.
I’ve mentioned it a few times around here, but James C Scott’s Seeing Like A State* has a fascinating look at the way language changed to prefer “overview”-type ways of describing location/distance/etc, as opposed to these more situational/embodied measures & directions which were previously commonplace.
> do not have words for "left" and "right" and instead use cardinal terms for everything. Speakers of such languages presumably then must know their orientation at all times.
Huh, interesting. Do you know if they actually do know their orientation at all times, or is it just that "west" is always "left" and "east" is always "right", regardless of absolute orientation?
From my own experience I would guess they know their orientation at all times.
In Guadalajara, Mexico, where I live. I've seen it first hand. People of certain age that lived near the center of the city use an absolute system for navigating the city, and to give directions on how to get to places with phrases like "up the river", "down the river", of an old river no longer existent that used to pass through the center of the city. And they always know which way goes to the center of the city, even when going outside the city center and to unknown neighborhoods. My father is one of such people.
Another fun fact: evidently, one third of Earth's languages (not one third of speakers mind you) do not have words for "left" and "right" and instead use cardinal terms for everything. Speakers of such languages presumably then must know their orientation at all times.