Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

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Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 · rating details · 1,072 ratings · 224 reviews

A masterpiece of linguistics scholarship, at once erudite and entertaining, confronts the thorny question of how—and whether—culture shapes language and language, culture

Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping ord...more

Hardcover, 312 pages

Published August 31st 2010 by Metropolitan Books (first published January 1st 2010)

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Dec 14, 2012 Geoffrey Fox rated it 3 of 5 stars

This digressive examination of whether and, if so, how a speaker's language structures his/her thoughts contains two interesting arguments bundled with amusing anecdotes about odd languages and linguists. Some of the descriptions of non-Western languages, and even of Western languages (English among them) at earlier stages of development, show truly surprising ways of putting together information, such as numbers of tenses, whether person and time of action are included in verb or noun or in sep...more This digressive examination of whether and, if so, how a speaker's language structures his/her thoughts contains two interesting arguments bundled with amusing anecdotes about odd languages and linguists. Some of the descriptions of non-Western languages, and even of Western languages (English among them) at earlier stages of development, show truly surprising ways of putting together information, such as numbers of tenses, whether person and time of action are included in verb or noun or in separate words (as in modern English), and even the number of sounds available to speakers. Current consensus: No language is a prison of thought; the speaker of any language can find a way to express any idea, even if s/he has to invent or borrow new vocabulary for some of it. But some languages oblige the speaker to give information that is optional in other languages. The handiest example is the English pronouns; if I'm speaking of a person, I can't say "it" visited me, I have to let you know whether the person was "he" or "she". If we're speaking Turkish (or any of many other languages with unsexed pronouns), I can leave the sex of the person ambiguous if I choose — or add something if I want to let you know.

The first of the two interesting arguments is about the language of color. As William Gladstone discovered in his monumental study of Homer, there are no color references beyond "black" (meaning dark), "white" or light, and red in the Odyssey or Iliad. (I had had no idea that the politician Gladstone, before becoming PM, had been such an important scholar). The sea or sky are never described as blue, the word sometimes translated as "green" is really much vaguer (could be yellow, or could just mean "ripe"). Later research revealed that no ancient language, or modern language of preliterate simple societies, has a developed vocabulary for all the colors that you or I would see and name and that surround them in their environment. Gladstone and generations of later linguists assumed there was something wrong with primitive and ancient people's color vision. But no: Deutscher reports all the tests that have shown that even people who have no names for many color tones can see them perfectly well if they need to. They don't think of the sky as "blue" because it does not seem to them to be an object, just a vast emptiness, and as people become more aware of different colors blue is always (so far in all the studies) the last to be named, because it just doesn't appear much in their environment (except that empty sky). We today are far more sensitive to colors than our ancestors because of all the colored objects on the market and in our household and on our computer screens etc. For people a few centuries back, distinguishing between bright and dark and red (because of blood, symbolizing life) was quite enough.

The second argument is more amusing though less important: How assigning gender to inanimate objects affects, but only slightly, the way people perceive them. The German "die Brucke" is described as female, graceful, delicate, etc., the Spanish "el puente" as male, big, sturdy, the English "bridge" is simply a thing with no preconception about its delicacy or strength. But all three words refer to the same object. The sexual connotations of dish, spoon, sea, etc. are faint and of little consequence to most speakers in ordinary life, but can add flavor to the poetry in those languages that have not (as in English) lost their genders.(less)

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Aug 07, 2012 Madeleine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: linguistics-al-dente, our-libeary, head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, mmxii

I finished this book, like, two weeks ago, right when my job's special breed of life-consuming crazy was bearing down on me with an animalistic rabidity. Let's see what I remembered about it, aside from the fact that it was generously packed with treats that made my inner word-nerd dance oh-so-whitely with joy.

First of all, the author's first language is Yiddish. Seeing as I know far more native-tongue butchers of English than I do folks who can finesse the language like they're trying to get in...more I finished this book, like, two weeks ago, right when my job's special breed of life-consuming crazy was bearing down on me with an animalistic rabidity. Let's see what I remembered about it, aside from the fact that it was generously packed with treats that made my inner word-nerd dance oh-so-whitely with joy.

First of all, the author's first language is Yiddish. Seeing as I know far more native-tongue butchers of English than I do folks who can finesse the language like they're trying to get into its pants on the first date, it always disproportionately impresses me when a non-native speaker can so thoroughly rock this notoriously tricky tongue. Every well-executed pun (my ultimate linguistic guilty pleasure, for sure), every beautifully rendered lengthy sentence, every GRE-worthy word did something extra-special to my brain because I just couldn't get over how flawless and stunning Deutscher's English is. There are people who can write literately and there are people who should be getting paid to write because they're so bloody good at it: Betcha can't guess where I think the author fits on that spectrum.

The book begins with a lengthy examination of how color names and thresholds vary across languages. The strangeness of Homer's color vocabulary in "The Odyssey" ("wine-dark sea" being the jumping-off point here), possible biological mutations of the eye over a couple millennia, different cultures' attitudes toward the importance of naming hues, and how red always seems to be the first proper color to be saddled with a name are just a few of the topics explored in the book's first half. Since the influence that language and culture have on each other is apparently a concept in its respectable infancy (being the victim of red herrings, faulty conclusions and plain ol' stereotyping had reduced the line of thinking to rather embarrassing lows), it seems like using color-naming conventions as a primary example was the best way to go; however, had I not come to this book with a background in art and color theory (waning as they may be), I probably would have gone cross-eyed many times before yelling at the book to get to the bloody point already.

In exploring a topic as broad as cultural variations, even confining them to their linguistic mirrors leaves room for numerous forays into surprise discoveries. The failure of translations -- when, for example, one language employs gender nomenclature in ways the other doesn't -- was especially interesting to me. Realizing how a passage can be so packed with implications and inherent musicality in its original tongue but so flat and uninspired in another left me with a whole new respect for the difficulties of translating an entire work, especially once this book offered up snippets indicating that knowing a language is only half of truly understanding its place as a living, malleable part of society.

There were other things that tickled me enough to hastily scribble a few now-nonsensically truncated notes to myself, like how this book didn't focus on just the more popular Germanic and Romance languages, as quite a few tribal tongues received considerable attention. A number of languages seemed to reflect a less-than-modern view of women (I'll be damned if I can think of any examples right now). And it seems as though Latin has been key in uncovering cultural differences, though I could have told you that as a high-school freshman, thanks to my then-textbook's inclusion of "plagosa" (which means "fond of whipping") in its back-of-the-book dictionary. (less)

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May 11, 2013 djcb rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Book about the way language influences the way we think -- and vice-versa. While the famous Sapir-Whorf thesis has been debunked (and is a bit of an embarrassment for linguists), in the end it seems that language and our thinking *do* have have some influence upon each other.

I enjoyed the discussion of Homer and the weird usage of colors, and the way some Australian tribes use an absolute (well, with earth as the frame of reference) coordinate system rather than 'left of me', 'in front of me' et...more

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Jun 12, 2010 !Tæmbuŝu marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: language, science

Reviewed by The Guardian

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Apr 28, 2013 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am pleased to find so many readers of this book. As the author explains, he aims further than to explore the obvious: "why some languages have nine million words for snow or for shearing a camel". I must admit I am fond of such anecdotical information, and I missed some of that here. Instead, Deutscher sets out to prove his thesis: your native tongue affects the way you think, by forcing you to give some information when you construct your sentences. For instance, in Spanish you must always in...more I am pleased to find so many readers of this book. As the author explains, he aims further than to explore the obvious: "why some languages have nine million words for snow or for shearing a camel". I must admit I am fond of such anecdotical information, and I missed some of that here. Instead, Deutscher sets out to prove his thesis: your native tongue affects the way you think, by forcing you to give some information when you construct your sentences. For instance, in Spanish you must always indicate the gender of a noun. Having to include certain elements shapes our mind in a particular way.
In the first part of the book, the expert explores the study of this question in the history of linguistics, starting with the analysis of colour in Homer by Gladstone, which I found quite interesting. In the second part Deutscher proves his thesis by providing evidence and constructs his argument.
My problem was in this evidence. In my opinion, it would be necessary to be a native speaker of these languages to be able to give certain assertions. Instead, research is based on interviews and questionnaires with native speakers. Hence, we depend on the opinions of individuals and their whims (what shall I answer to this weird question?), presumably translated afterwards by some assistant. I must confess I often have a problem with this style of gathering evidence. I feel like this when academic colleagues send us questionnaires about our teaching practice. How honestly are we all answering the questions?
Are we saying what we know they want to hear, or what our institution preaches? I feel like this also with oral history or witness accounts. In extreme circumstances, some of these declarations could be lies, stories or exaggerations and the speakers could be full of their own importance, selling a "persona".
In my Spanish lessons, my students are often confused by the fact that people (la gente) or partner (la pareja) are feminine words. I take the opportunity to explain that grammatical gender has nothing to do with sexuality, it is just a convention. Perhaps in poetry or tradition some natural elements are perceived as "women", as the sea or the moon, but I don't think this extends in the minds of native speakers to every day objects such as a chair or a table, which are also feminine. The tests that Deutscher deviced in this area seemed to me childish. He felt his point proven before he had actually managed to prove it.
To sum up, I enjoyed learning bits and bobs along the way, but I found the argumentation and evidence faulty and superficial. We are a long way from knowing what actually happens in our brain when we learn and use a language.(less)

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Feb 21, 2013 Kelly Wagner rated it 5 of 5 stars

I enjoy reading popularized science, and this counts as science - somewhere between the social science of anthropology and the physical science of biology. Reading the various examples of how different languages divide up color and gender was fun - did you know that some languages have 5 genders, not just male and female and neuter to correspond with what we think of as gender and that most European languages use as gender (English is deficient on this one; only our pronouns are gendered except...more I enjoy reading popularized science, and this counts as science - somewhere between the social science of anthropology and the physical science of biology. Reading the various examples of how different languages divide up color and gender was fun - did you know that some languages have 5 genders, not just male and female and neuter to correspond with what we think of as gender and that most European languages use as gender (English is deficient on this one; only our pronouns are gendered except when we borrow from Latin, such as alumnus and alumna), but also markers that function exactly like sex except that they indicate vegetable vs. animal vs. human, rather than male vs. female. The big concept I took away from the book is that while no language prevents us from thinking about and talking about anything whatsoever (some languages need more words for some concepts, is all), the language of the culture we live in does force us to think about some things more than speakers of other languages automatically think about those things. In English, we have to notice whether a third person we are talking about is male or female, because our third person pronouns are gendered, so we have to pay a bit more attention to the sex of people we may never have met, than, say, a speaker of Mandarin, who can refer to all third persons with the same pronoun. And similarly, a German person has to pay a bit more attention to who has moved in next door in order to gossip about that person, because the word for neighbor is different for male than for female, whereas in English, we can talk about how much noise the neighbor makes without ever having seen that person to know what to call them. Important concept: it's not that we are not capable of making that distinction, it's just that we're not FORCED to. So it is with colors - many languages have fewer color names than English; that doesn't mean that they can't tell those colors apart, just that they don't ordinarily bother to if they don't have to.

As you can tell from the long description, I enjoyed the heck out of this book.(less)

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Oct 12, 2012 Deborah rated it 3 of 5 stars

In describing the evolution of color concepts, when "blue" was not yet recognized and subsumed under either black or green, I like the phrase the characterizes the debate between nature and culture as being about: "the relation between what the eye can see and what language can describe."

Thank of Homer's oxen being wine-colored, and him raving about "green honey." The Indian Vedas and the Bible, Icelandic sagas, and even the Koran bear evidence of color deficiencies. The sun and reddening dawn's...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Hilary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: a-miraculous-pleasure-read

Non fiction for fun, hooray!

I picked this up while house sitting for my former adviser, who is a language/linguistics researcher of sorts. Since I was actively attempting to avoid writing my dissertation proposal, I read this instead, and was immediately hooked. I remembered my page and then got it out of the library. (However, it has taken me longer than I'd like to finish reading it because I actually started writing.)

This is an absolutely brilliant argument for how culture begets language be...more

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May 17, 2012 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars

The essential premise of this work is that culture can shape language. Interesting topic, interesting read.

I found the first section(s) of the book compelling for their historical references and some trenchant, intelligent insights. Deutcher's vigilance in maintaining a balanced analysis of both his and others' conclusions (especially in the first half of the book) is admirable. Few holes in analysis can be found. Near the end, however, it seemed that Deutscher was saving his weakest ideas for l...more

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Apr 06, 2012 Sally rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, science

I enjoyed this book, especially its discussion of variations in the language of color in different cultures. The author's thesis is that "fundamental aspects of our thought are influenced by the cultural conventions of our society, to a much greater extent than is fashionable to admit today," with linguistics providing the data he uses to back this claim up. He stresses that it is not that any particular language prevents its native speakers from understanding or expressing ideas, but rather tha...more

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Jan 26, 2012 Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

One small criticism first: this was in some ways less far-ranging and comprehensive than I'd imagined, focussing on just three aspects of language and the perception of reality - colour, gender and spatial relations. And the sections on colour account for almost half the book. This can be forgiven as these are the only areas in which any serious and conclusive research has been done.
But once you get past that narrowing of the scope, this is a still an eye-opening and enormously readble book, ful...more

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Dec 18, 2011 Courtney Johnston rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: big-ideas-made-accessible, borrowed, science

In their pronouncements on language, culture, and thought, it seems that big thinkers in their grand œuvres have not ever risen much above little thinkers over their hors d'œuvre. Given such an unappetizing history of precedents, is there any hope of getting something savoury out of the discussion?Once one has sifed out the unfounded and uninformed, the farcical and the fantastic, is there anything sensible left to say about the relation between language, culture, and thought? Does language refl

...more

In their pronouncements on language, culture, and thought, it seems that big thinkers in their grand œuvres have not ever risen much above little thinkers over their hors d'œuvre. Given such an unappetizing history of precedents, is there any hope of getting something savoury out of the discussion?Once one has sifed out the unfounded and uninformed, the farcical and the fantastic, is there anything sensible left to say about the relation between language, culture, and thought? Does language reflect the culture of a society in any profound sense, beyond such trivia as the number of words it has for snow or for shearing camels? and even more contentiously, can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts and perceptions?

For most serious scholars today, the answer to all these questions is a resounding no. The dominant view among contemporary linguists is that language is primarily an instinct, in other words, that the fundaments of language are coded into our genes and are the same across the human race.

... In the pages to follow, however, I will try to convince you, probably against your initial intuition, and certainly against your initial intuition, and certainly against the fashionable academic view of today, that the answer to the question above is - yes. In this plaidoyer for culture, I will argue that cultural differences are reflected in language in profound ways, and that a growing body of reliable scientific research provides solid evidence that our mother tongue can affect how we think and how we perceive the world.

Through his the book, Deutscher takes us through over a century of thinking and writing about language. He opens with a fascinating investigation of William Gladstone's (yup, the British prime minister) magisterial publication 'Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age', of which one chapter, towards the end, is devoted to 'Homer's perception and use of colour'.

Gladstone painstakingly reviewed the Iliad and the Odyssey, and found something bewildering and radical. Homer (Gladstone firmly believed in an actual Homer), he concluded, did not appear to see the world in the same colours that modern man does. Take, for example, the immortal phrase 'the wine-dark sea'. Now, think about it literally. When is the sea ever actually the colour of wine? Or how about this. If you break the two epic poems down meticulously, you'll discover that the only other thing that Homer describes as 'wine-dark' are ... oxen. Yup. Cows, and the sea. Snap. Or this. There are over 170 descriptions of things that are black. There are about one hundred references to things that are white. But there are only thirteen uses of the word eruthros (red), a scant ten of xanthos (yellow), six of ioeis (violet). And nowhere will you find a word that means 'blue'. So - did the ancient Greeks see the world in colour, or black and white?

The book is worth reading for Deutscher's telling of Gladstone's story alone. From Gladstone he moves out into a full examination of the language of colour, ancient and modern, and it's a delightful journey. The next two thirds, where Deutscher expounds his argument for perception and expression being shaped by language through culture, enraptured me less. His argument is that language doesn't restrict what we are able to think and perceive, but can force us to be aware of some things all the time. If we give describe our world through the cardinal directions rather than 'left' and 'right' ('watch out for the step to the north of your foot') we must be aware of those directions at all times (as are - or were - certain Aboriginal tribes). If we speak a gendered language, we will automatically make certain gendered associations between objects and qualities or values.*

These two sections were less compelling for me. I enjoy Deutscher's style (some reviewers find it verbose - I like the playfulness) but I rather wish I'd started with his more general overview, The Unfolding of Language. As for his thesis? I need to do more reading before I can decide. But that's always something to look forward to.

*Deutscher did made me feel feel somewhat bereft about egalitarian, but uninflected, English:

Nevertheless, even if grammatical gender does not restrict anyone's capacity for reasoning, that does not make its consequence any less severe for those immured in a gendered mother tongue. ... The chain of associations imposed by the genders of one's language are all but impossible to cast off.

But if you native speakers of English are tempted to feel sorry for those of us who are shackled by the heavy load of an irrational gender system, then think again. I would never want to change places with you. My mind may be weighed down by an arbitrary and illogical set of associations, but my world has so much to it that you entirely miss out on, because the landscape of my language is so much more fertile that your arid desert of 'it's'. ... English translations of Charles Baudelaire's 'L'homme et la mer', however, inspired, can never hope to capture the tempestuous relationship of attraction and antagonism between 'him' (the man) and 'her' (the sea); not can English do justice to Pablo Neruda's 'Ode to the Sea', in which the (masculine) el mar strikes a stone (una piedra) and then 'he caresses her, kisses her, drenches her, pounds his chest, repeating his own name' ....

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Oct 24, 2011 Robin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a super-intellectual/adademic book about how our mother tongue can affect our thinking. Nevertheless, it is quite interesting, mostly. I say "mostly" because some of the concepts are repeated over and over. It gets quite dull.

The important concepts of the book are:
1) Which mother tongue we experience CAN affect our thinking, and
2) All ideas in the universe can be communicated in every language.

I feel the ways our mother tongue can affect our thinking are so small and inconsequential,...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Al Bità rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book about language, mostly because the information provided is done so with great verve and charm by the author. His chatty style is most disarming — this is a man who knows how to educate his readers almost effortlessly: he will occasionally lead you astray deliberately, so that he can later point out what further research has revealed. And it is quite rewarding!

This book limits itself to three specific aspects of language: the words used in languages for colo...more I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book about language, mostly because the information provided is done so with great verve and charm by the author. His chatty style is most disarming — this is a man who knows how to educate his readers almost effortlessly: he will occasionally lead you astray deliberately, so that he can later point out what further research has revealed. And it is quite rewarding!

This book limits itself to three specific aspects of language: the words used in languages for colour; the method used in various cultures and languages for orientation of oneself within the world; and an examination of the use of 'gender' in many languages (with English being one of the few that seems to particularly eschew this quality. The overall objective seems to be that from his studies Deutscher tends to believe that, as the title tells us, the world does look different in other languages. He tends to leave it at that: to argue as to how different that world is, and whether this indicates anything further with regard to science, philosophy, religion, culture, etc. are obviously left for others to ponder.

I used quotes around the word 'gender' above because it was in this section (entitled "Sex and Syntax") that I was not completely convinced by his argument. He uses the example of a poem by Heine in which a pine tree in the North dreams of a palm tree 'far in the East', and points out that in the original German language a pine tree is a masculine word, while a palm tree is a feminine word — thus there is a 'sexual overtone' found in the original which a simple English translation would fail to communicate. He seems to argue that this lack of gender makes English less rich in its connotations. (It also explains why often enough learners of English from a country where words have a sexual distinction applied to them will often make 'mistakes' with personal pronouns, and will apply them 'incorrectly' to English words: in other words, they are still thinking of a word in the sex of their original language.) What bothers me about this is that my background is Italian, a language which has male and female words, but I can never remember thinking that they had an actual sexual connotation. For example, the word for a fork in Italian is feminine, but it does not mean that there are sexual connotations connected to a fork. Maybe I am being too precious about this, but it did make me wonder about whether Deutscher's 'smooth talking' might not mask other aspects which might not be 'quite right'…

Be that as it may, the book is still quite a wonderful read for anyone interested in languages in general.(less)

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Kalliope I am currently taking an art course focused on colors. And it has been a surprise to me that in general, languages are very poor at dealing with them....more
Oct 26, 2012 01:10am

Al Bità You are quite right about becoming 'different' when speaking in a different language — all part of the mystery surrounding how we as human beings oper...more
Oct 28, 2012 08:09am

Jul 27, 2011 John Pappas rated it 3 of 5 stars

Deutscher uses how cultures name and perceive color as a starting point to reanimate the argument that language influences thought and perception. Looking backward to linguists, scientists, anthropologists and philosophers who intuitively see the connection between language and thought but do not have the evidence to prove a connection, Deutscher points out the fallacies and errors in the work of Sapir and Whorf without discrediting the whole idea of linguistic determinism or relativity. Bringin...more

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Mar 09, 2011 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Through the language glass was an entertaining and interesting book about how language effects the way people think and perceive the world. His writing style is fun to read, sort of tongue in cheek.

His sometimes sarcastic attitude towards former philosophers and scientists helped me read his book more critically. Instead of accepting his theories as law I found myself more often than not saying "I wonder...?" and there was a lot of interesting food for thought.

Deutscher acknowledges that there...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Jodi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Want to state immediately, that I did not read this book cover to cover. Started it probably in November and with one thing or another, knew I would never complete it whole. So, I read parts of it and thought it was time to get it back on the library shelf! With that said, must say it is excellent.
Very thought provoking as I have been interested in language--as a mystery. How does the little kid in Chicago learn how to express him/herself as does one in Beijing--in totally different ways. Have w...more Want to state immediately, that I did not read this book cover to cover. Started it probably in November and with one thing or another, knew I would never complete it whole. So, I read parts of it and thought it was time to get it back on the library shelf! With that said, must say it is excellent.
Very thought provoking as I have been interested in language--as a mystery. How does the little kid in Chicago learn how to express him/herself as does one in Beijing--in totally different ways. Have wondered if our language prevents us from certain thinking or do we think differently because we have different language. Well, Deutscher confesses that we don’t know. There have been extensive experiments done (he describes many) and technologies employed with no concrete answers. As he said, an MRI shows us where the ‘lights’ are on but do we know what is happening?
Since I had recently listened to The Odyssey, Deutscher’s explanation of the evolution of ‘color language’ was interesting. I thought it was odd that the sea was constantly described as black and other unusual word usage in The Odyssey. According to Deutscher, the Greeks did not have a developed color sense so they couldn’t view blues, purples etc. Have never heard of that before. Very interesting and it makes sense of some of the medieval reading I have done too as Deutscher explains our optical evolution.
For expression, our words can sometimes not suffice for what we want to say. Classic example for me is the Danish word, huglig. This means, welcoming, cozy, comfortable, hospitable…. A Dane would tell you that they went to a friend’s house and it was huglig—creating an entire connotation. Does that make the cultures think / act differently? Creating a huglig home is very important to Danes--- so did they match a word to their characteristic or the reverse? Deutscher may not take a firm stand.
Okay, way too long of an entry for a book I didn’t read all the way through but can assure you I will return to this and finish it. Just think it is time to get it back on the shelf for others to enjoy.
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Dec 07, 2010 Alex Templeton rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of the best classes I took during my time at Sarah Lawrence was a class called Linguistic Anthropology (and not just because we got to write a paper that focused on a "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode!). In this class, we discussed how language and culture often have a reciprocal relationship. This book revisited some familiar friends from that class--Franz Boas! Edward Sapir! Benjamin Whorf!--but, in some ways, disputed their findings. It was definitely a cool feeling to see the evol...more

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Oct 05, 2010 Jan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another brilliant work of popular science from linguist Guy Deutscher. "Through the Language Glass" aims to bring the reader up to date on an easy-to-formulate but nearly impossible-to-answer question in linguistics: to what degree does one's language impact one's thought processes?

This exploration centers around a very specific phenomenon, which is that languages differ in their stock of words for colors, and why some languages (like English) have names for all the colors we would commonly plac...more Another brilliant work of popular science from linguist Guy Deutscher. "Through the Language Glass" aims to bring the reader up to date on an easy-to-formulate but nearly impossible-to-answer question in linguistics: to what degree does one's language impact one's thought processes?

This exploration centers around a very specific phenomenon, which is that languages differ in their stock of words for colors, and why some languages (like English) have names for all the colors we would commonly place in the rainbow, while Ancient Greek and many languages of isolated tribes don't have much more beyond white, black, and red. Scholars have been aware of this observation for nearly two centuries, and the history of our making sense of it provides a neat stand-in for the history of science in general. Over the years, brilliant minds have conjured a host of unfortunately wrong solutions (Homer's people were less evolved! the savages lack the mental machinery to perceive color! Lamarckian genetics!), confirmed either by prejudice or disproved by increasingly novel experiments.

The upshot of these investigations for twentieth-century linguistics was first the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that one's language of origin so wholly determines one's mental capacities that a speaker of Hopi, in which certain English-speaking linguists lacked the creativity to recognize a structure functioning as "tense", wouldn't be able to comprehend the concept of time... and, as political correctness later took hold, the dogma that "all languages are equally complex." The pleasure of this book is that Deutscher takes none of it at face value, and is able to describe recent achievements in linguistics for what they are -- the first steps in a very nascent body of science.

Overall, the quality of the writing is sparkling, and reading "Through the Language Glass" rarely flags below the level of an extremely engrossing conversation with someone who is enthusiastic about the subject matter and consistently humorous. Of course, what gives the book its value as popular science is that nothing is taken for granted, and assumptions are rejected lest we go down the path of pseudo-science and the quackery that dominates a lot of non-professional speculation about language in the human mind. The sheer honesty, though, renders the final product unsatisfying, as there are practically no answers and we are just beginning to figure out how to ask the questions.(less)

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Dec 25, 2011 Bruce Sanders rated it 4 of 5 stars

The purpose of this book is to show that contrary to linguistic conventional wisdom, language can affect the way we conceptualize the world. The book is divided into two parts. The first part answers the question, “If we hold language up as a mirror to the mind, what do we see reflected there: human nature or the cultural conventions of our society?” The second part of the book asks, “Do different languages lead their speakers to different perceptions? Is our particular language a lens through w...more The purpose of this book is to show that contrary to linguistic conventional wisdom, language can affect the way we conceptualize the world. The book is divided into two parts. The first part answers the question, “If we hold language up as a mirror to the mind, what do we see reflected there: human nature or the cultural conventions of our society?” The second part of the book asks, “Do different languages lead their speakers to different perceptions? Is our particular language a lens through which we view the world?"

What follows is a fascinating history of linguistics as it applies to these questions especially with regards to language and its affects on color perception. Deutscher is careful to distance his position from the radical linguistic relativism of people like Sapir and Whorf. In fact, he thoroughly debunks those long discredited views. He emphatically does not believe that language influences the physics of the cosmos.

Instead, his project is more subtle. What he specifically sets out to prove is that, "When a language forces its speakers to pay attention to certain aspects of the world each time they open their mouths or prick up their ears, such habits of speech can eventually settle into habits of mind with consequences for memory, or perception, or associations, or even practical skills."

Some of the examples he uses to make his case are absolutely fascinating, such as languages that depend wholly on geographic spatial orientation and completely lack egocentric orientation. In such languages, rather than being right or left handed you are east, west, north, or south handed depending on the direction you are facing at the time.

The color discussion might have been enhanced with some discussion of the color perception of the Himba tribe of Namibia and how it differs from Western color perception. I also would have liked to have seen more than a note referring to the controversies related to the way an Amazonian tribe, the Piraha, conceptualize the world. But these are quibbles. When all is said and done this book has accomplished its task. The arguments are highly cogent. The case is made. (less)

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Jan 10, 2013 Charlotte Gilbert rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Linguists, Language Lovers

Shelves: anthropology, culture, non-fiction, language, linguistics

Reading this book took me a little longer than I would have normally expected. I think, though, that the fault is more my lack of time than any problem with the book itself. Through the Language Glass is certainly a book that you want to be able to sit down and just read, without interruption. That way I think you'll get the most out of it, and be able to happily mull over what the words are telling you.
I really enjoyed this book. There were frequently parts that made me stop and think. More of...more

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Dec 07, 2011 Oscar rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: language

Guy Deutscher examines questions regarding the complicated relationship between culture and language. Does one's language shape their thought process? Does one's cultural values shape the structure of their language? These are, as Deutscher puts it, age old questions, which with the passing of time and generated insight, one can continue asking and attempt to answers. Deutscher centers much of his discussion on the question of color and how different cultures view colors differently. Such a real...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Linh Vu rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: linguistics

Deutscher manages to answer two important questions of linguistics history in a particularly accessible n sticky way without sacrificing too much of technical evidence. He consideres three areas: color perception, spatial orientation and noun genders. The first question, the classic nature or nurture debate, is discussed primarily within the first area - color perception, as Deutscher traces the research from Gladstone to Geiger n Rivers. Deutscher once again (after the Unfolding of Language) es...more

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Jul 04, 2011 Arpan rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is a book that attempts, quite mysteriously, to convince a general nonacademic public something they never really questioned anyway. Although the popular view in the field of Linguistics is that a particular language does not significantly affect the speaker's perception of reality, it has been my experience that the overwhelming majority of people outside this field never got this memo. Thus, it's perplexing why a book of popular nonfiction would appear that offers weak and often self-crit...more

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Dec 11, 2010 Sean Saxe rated it 5 of 5 stars

How does language affect our perception of the world? According to Guy Deutscher, in more ways than one would expect. With a major focus on colors, and smaller, but no less profound, sections dedicated to directions and genders, Deutscher does a fantastic job of examining research over the past 150 years that has tried to explain the discrepancies in labels among languages. For example, in some languages directions are not egocentric (i.e. left, right, front, behind), but geographic (north, sout...more

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Sep 18, 2010 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: linguistics

Benjamin Whorf, an amateur anthropologist, suggested that language affected the way people think, in very fundamental ways, although the idea hardly originated with him.

Whorf's ideas have not held up to serious analysis and investigation. Deutscher, however, summarizes recent research on linguistic elements such as the description of directions, color terminology, and gender, suggesting that language does subtly influence perception and thought.

This book also contains some interesting intellect...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Lena Tumasyan rated it 3 of 5 stars

As a native Russian speaker, I always felt different from Americans. I've always wondered if the language i was brought up with altered my thinking in ways Americans weren't. I was hoping to get the answer in this book and I was really disappointed.

The book started out strong, showing how 3 different languages defined "culture" in different ways (French being most romantic and German being most brutal). But then once I started reading the book, it never really delved deeply into the subject of h...more

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Aug 07, 2011 Charlie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book uses three 'case studies' (colour, gender and spacial awareness) to look at how language affects our view of the world, our thinking and our memory.

The first third of the book looks in depth at the history of the study of how colour is described by various international and classical cultures and how the differences have been (miss)interpreted by an assortment of learned gentlemen over the years. This gives a very nice springboard to the reader to see the types of pitfalls that such st...more

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Dec 23, 2010 Stewart rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Language" is a fascinating look at several features of languages, contrasting ancient languages with modern ones and comparing current world languages. The first section looks at color and language. Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" (and other ancient literature) are examined. Deutscher notes that Homer's description of color is markedly "awry" compared to color description in modern Western languages. He argues that languages have...more "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Language" is a fascinating look at several features of languages, contrasting ancient languages with modern ones and comparing current world languages. The first section looks at color and language. Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" (and other ancient literature) are examined. Deutscher notes that Homer's description of color is markedly "awry" compared to color description in modern Western languages. He argues that languages have evolved in their ability to describe colors, making for instance "wine-dark sea" in the Greek of Homer seem strange from the perspective of modern English. The author notes that modern languages divide up the color spectrum differently. Russian, as one example, has two words for blue, but English has one. English has several words for red (scarlet, maroon, pink) while only one for yellow.
Deutcher also explores our consciousness of and ability to describe space and directions, looking at a number of well-known languages (including English) and little-known languages spoken by only hundreds of people. English usually uses an egocentric system in providing directions ("Take a right at Elm Street and a left at the church.") but sometimes uses a geographic system ("Oregon is north of California."). However, the language Guugu Yimithirr in northeastern Australia exclusively uses directional directions and has no words for "left" or "right."
Deutcher also has a chapter on linguistic gender and the historic trend in Indo-European languages to simplification in their grammar, particularly when languages rub together. "The English language after the Norman Conquest is a case in point: until the eleventh century, English had an elaborate word structure similar to that of modern-day German, but much of this complexity was wiped out in the period after 1066, no doubt because of the contact between speakers of the different languages [i.e. Anglo-Saxon and Norman French]."
In analyzing these aspects of language, the book asks how languages influence the way we see the world and how we see the world influences how we speak and write. To a student of language, "Through the Language Glass" provides much material for thought about language, things that we usually take for granted.
(less)

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Feb 06, 2012 Alan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I recommend reading David Brooks’s "The Social Animal" right before this book. It makes Deutscher’s new news more momentous. It takes a while to get to the new news, but the lead-up is still fun reading. He enjoys repeating points using different words and examples, but he tells good stories and the words and examples are sufficiently entertaining that the repetition was more enjoyable than exasperating. The new news is about recent experiments showing that language affects perception. The empir...more

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About Guy Deutscher

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Guy Deutscher is the author of Through the Language Glass and The Unfolding of Language. Formerly a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge and of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Languages in the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, he is an honorary Research Fellow at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures in the University of Manc...more

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“Anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language knows only too dearly that languages can be full of pointless irregularities that increase complexity considerably without contributing much to the ability to express ideas. English, for instance, would have losed none of its expressive power if some of its verbs leaved their irregular past tense behind and becomed regular.” — 3 people liked it

“And if Germans do have systematic minds, this is just as likely to be because their exceedingly erratic mother tongue has exhausted their brains' capacity to cope with any further irregularity” — 3 people liked it

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