I'm almost tone deaf, can't remember names, and have to calculate north by looking at the sun and trying to remember what time of day it is. Should I get a new brain? Incidentally, there are languages that accent with pitch rather than stress (such as Japanese and Attic Greek). I wonder what it is like to have perfect pitch and speak those.

[Chalky] How do you go in the Southern Hemisphere, in a place you haven't seen a map of?

I have an excellent sense of direction and hardly ever get lost, but I think that's got more to do with observation of my surroundings and the use of maps, mental and otherwise. I feel slightly unnerved without a map, if I am going to spend a while in a place. I carry a compass sometimes. The problem is that, since I obviously use the sun's position for orientation, this sense is most finely tuned on the southern hemisphere environment, so my location of north flips 180degrees when in the northern hemisphere. This is a *most* unnerving experience. I was convinced that London was t' other way 'round, and had to work very hard to swap to the "correct" directions.

[Flerdle] I can relate to that. I find the same problem when I go South of the equator and the sun goes the wrong way.

(Breadmaster) It doesn't make any difference, having perfect pitch. It's the change of pitch that is important. The pitch of speech varies so rapidly, even during one syllable, that it is impossible to assign a pitch to it, other than high or low, say. BTW your method of finding north is quite normal and one I use myself, if that's any comfort.

[flerdle] I wouldn't know - having never ventured into that territory.

[INJ] It does, it does!! And the moon's upside down.

I don't think I consciously look for or use the sun's position or movement, it just adds to a general sense of where's where.

[Chalky] You might be in for a surprise then :-)

there must be limits, but so far I haven't found one. I even, in my fairly drunken state, remembered the Russian for 'do you mind if I use your toilet', while nipping into a bar in St Petersburg on my merry way back to Ligovskii Prospekt. I may have been born with it, but I don't think I was ever drunk as a child.

*goes to work*

[flerdle] It would be interesting for sure. I've been fairly close to the equator but never below it [see? I still see north as 'up' and south as 'down'] Can relate to everything you said earlier about observation, map usage, etc. Even as a child I had a compulsion to know where I was placed and was first to a floor plan, street plan or map - it made my day when faced with one of those pictorial street guide display thingies with a big fat arrow saying YOU ARE HERE!