Languages are, needless to say, key to our ability as human beings to communicate, and generally languages are similar in their structure and form. Certainly, differences do exist, such as the concept of gender for inanimate object as found in French and Spanish—a concept totally foreign to english speakers.
But, there are a couple of languages that have far stranger differences, and these differences actually change the way their speakers can interact with the world around them.
For instance, the Australian aboriginal language, Guugu Yimithirr, has no concept of "left", "right", "in front" or "behind." Instead, the language uses the points of the compass to denote these. Most languages use what is known as egocentric coordinates to describe things in the small space around people, only moving to geographic (compass based) coordinates for large spaces.
The speakers of Guugu Yimithirr only ever use geographic coordinated and could be heard saying something like "watch out for that large spider north of your foot."
While this might seem odd to us, it is not an isolated event, with a number of languages all over the world using this system. Granted, they are not exactly mainstream languages, but they exist and are still in use today.
An interesting spin off of using geographic coordinates in this manner is that these language speakers always intuitively know where north is regardless of where they might be, or what the conditions are.
It's a bit like having a permanent compass in your head.
