This would solve an issue I have regularily. Sighted people tend to invert left/right almost more then 50% of the time when telling directions to a blind person, especially if they are not looking in the same direction. In fact, the error is so common that I actually gave up listening to directions from random strangers. The likelihood of them being wrong is so high that it actually is dangerous to listen to sighted people without double-checking if they actually can be right.

> front, back, left, or right, they only have words for compass directions.

I know it's not exactly the same thing by I remember my Eastern-European grandma almost never using the words "right" of "left", she was almost always using what I can roughly translate as "upwards" and "downwards", as in: "paganel, give me that pitchfork that is upwards from you" or "pass me the rake that is downwards from where you are".

My grandparents lived in a mountainous region, and as such one of their main tools for making sense of where things were was to position those things "higher" or "lower" compared to the position of the speaker.

Thanks for that link. Fascinating. I had no idea of that linguistic aspect. My comments were just based on having spent some time in Cape York (in the bush & on the water) a few years ago.

I wonder if they'd also be less ego-centric, given that they don't perceive the world in terms of their orientation?

How language shapes the way we think by Lera Boroditsky: https://youtu.be/RKK7wGAYP6k