Mark Liberman at Language Log has an interesting take on the story about the Pirahã, who can’t count above three.

Suppose that there’s an isolated group — call them the Nerdahã — who just aren’t interested in throwing things…There’s no religious or moral prohibition against throwing, they just think it’s boring and a bit stupid, when they bother to think about it at all, which is rarely.
…
Because of their complete lack of interest in throwing, the Nerdahã language is completely lacking in throwing vocabulary. They have no words for pitch, fling, chuck, toss, sidearm, slider, curveball, bouncepass, and so on.

Liberman needn’t have invented a fictional group. He could have simply called them “Swedes”.

Which begs the question: how in the heck would you translate “Saving the Pitcher” into a non-throwing language like Nerdahã or Swedish?