Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?
Do we really need West and South when we can use negative North and negative East?
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Do we really need West and South when we can use negative North and negative East?
Yes of course.
Otherwise I couldn't say anymore: "I am looking North and my butt is looking South".
And how would you even pronounce south-Southwest then? Impossible unless you are quite drunk!
/s
anti-north-northeast doesn't sound unreasonable, but that's being logical instead of just thinking about two directions, as written in text, as OP is
Try all the 16 possibilities and then see how many "antis" you really need there.
In all cases, 2 at most.
North
North-north-east
North-east
North-east-east
East
Anti-north-east-east
Anti-north-east
Anti-north-north-east (south-north-east is impossible so the second anti would be redundant)
Anti-north
Anti-east-anti-north-north (reversed word order to distinguish it further)
Anti-east-anti-north
Anti-east-east-anti-north
Anti-east
Anti-east-east-north
Anti-east-north
Anti-east-north-north
Anti-north-north-east (south-north-east is impossible so the second anti would be redundant)
These extra complications make it even more unusable that the anti thing itself LOL
I was assuming a conlang situation where "north" referred more to the axis, rather than the direction.
Anti-north-north would be more "reversed-vertical-vertical" meaning it's reversed vertical (south), and closer to the vertical axis than the horizontal axis. North would just be "vertical" without being reversed.
I don't know what you are even talking about (and too lazy to put it into a translator now).
But I know that North and South are terms that must be usable for everybody. So, especially for such people who don't know what you are even talking about.
Essentially: it's not designed as a change from North/East/South/West, it's designed as a from-scratch way to refer to those directions.
The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, so let's say East is "Sun" and West is "Setting-Sun."
Polaris/The North Star is in the North, so let's call that direction "Star" and the other direction "No-Star."
When you say "Setting-Sun-Sun-Star," you're saying the direction is more similar to the path the sun takes through the sky than it is to the North Star, and in the direction the sun sets.
16 directions is pretty arbitrary anyway though, usually 8 is enough and then you don't have the confusion of repeated words.