A masterpiece of linguistics scholarship, at once erudite and entertaining, confronts the thorny question of how—and whether—cult... read full description
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Aug 04, 2011
Geoffrey
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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
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Jan 26, 2012
Simon
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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 More...
But once you get past that narrowing of the scope, this is a still an eye-opening and enormously readble book More...
Dec 18, 2011
Courtney
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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 reflMore...
Nov 20, 2011
Picked this off a shelf while killing time at the library. Read the first two chapters without moving :) The book offers an insightful and well-read argument on how language, in and of itself, causes a cultural impact (burden?) on a mind's conceptual readiness to live in a state among others (at a dinner table, within a business' ethics code, during discussions of city planning/"dove" & "peace"/God. I like the way it's organized and adore his careful choice of words as he de
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Oct 24, 2011
Robin
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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 thi More...
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 thi More...
Aug 03, 2011
Al
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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 langu More...
This book limits itself to three specific aspects of language: the words used in langu More...
Jul 27, 2011
John
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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
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Mar 09, 2011
Jenny
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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.
Deut More...
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.
Deut More...
Feb 24, 2011
Jodi
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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 wa More...
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 wa More...
Dec 07, 2010
Alex
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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 se
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Oct 05, 2010
Jan
rated it:
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 More...
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 More...
Dec 25, 2011
Bruce
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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 thr
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Dec 24, 2011
mzd
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Awesome little book. I'm not particularly interested in language as a subject, but this book touches on things like culture and perception as well as past research escapades. It's written in a very entertaining and engaging style too, which helps when you're digesting a lot of information.
I certainly didn't expect it to be as funny as it is. At one point Deutscher is talking about some dude's paper which tries to link philosophical tradition to grammar by attributing thought to syntax, and Deut More...
I certainly didn't expect it to be as funny as it is. At one point Deutscher is talking about some dude's paper which tries to link philosophical tradition to grammar by attributing thought to syntax, and Deut More...
Dec 07, 2011
Oscar
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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
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Jul 04, 2011
Arpan
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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-cr
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Dec 11, 2010
Sean
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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
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Sep 18, 2010
David
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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 so More...
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 so More...
Aug 12, 2011
Lena
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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 su More...
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 su More...
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Aug 07, 2011
Charlie
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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 pitfall More...
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 pitfall More...
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Dec 23, 2010
Stewart
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"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 Wester
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Feb 06, 2012
Alan
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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.
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Nov 11, 2010
A.
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I heard about this book through an article I read in the New York Times and checked it out based on the excerpt I read there. I am a TESOL by profession so this subject is near and dear to my heart. However, this book is aimed at the lay reader; if you've taken language acquisition or psycholinguistics courses, much of the information presented here will be very familiar and may or may not be worth your time.
On the other hand, I found the chapters about Gladstone's analysis of Hom More...
On the other hand, I found the chapters about Gladstone's analysis of Hom More...
Nov 20, 2011
Andrew
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This was Strand basement table bait - some nuggets of interest but frankly not enough here to merit 240 pages and however many hours of your time. Basic argument (language influences how we conceptualize and categorize continuous variation, especially color) would make an excellent times magazine article, butbecomes somewhat ponderous here. Act two explores the strong form of the argument (do language systems for gender, space, and color influence *thinking*?) but is short on bang/long on wimper
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Dec 28, 2010
Luise
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All non-fiction should be written with such wit and story-telling skills! This potentially exceedingly dry subject matter turns into a page-turner in some parts, even though the final findings of all this painstaking research are less than earth-shattering (we're really not that different, after all, in spite of many prevailing myths about the significance of certain linguistic oddities). The most fascinating nugget is the history of words for colours - they are late-comers in all languages, onl
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Jan 17, 2012
TheIron
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A fascinating book about a complex and abstract subject that is written in an extremely easy to read and light hearted manner. While the topic is language and its relation to culture and to mind, some of the most intriguing aspects of Deutscher's book is the history of scientific research into this field and the imagination and creativity needed by researchers attempting to discover the relation between mind and language. This book is written for the lay person, not for those who have studied l
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Jun 27, 2011
Eliza
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6/27/2011: This book is not for everyone--only for diehard language nerds. I loved it. It tackles the question: How does our mother tongue influence the way we see and talk about the world? Deutscher must also be a language nerd (well, duh) because he has spent a lot of time and effort to find ways to answer this question. His findings are particularly hard won because he has to concede often that we have no way of knowing what goes on in our brains, so experiments are crude at best. But he pe
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Apr 25, 2011
Julia
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This was unlike anything I've read in years. Written by a rather witty linguist, it's divided in two sections. The first dives into the mystery of why Homer and other ancient writers had such weird ideas about color, and had such a limited color vocabulary. The story is fascinating, weaving in the development of the field of anthropology, and the author does an excellent job of drawing you into the history without getting bogged down in controversy.
The second part of the book examines More...
The second part of the book examines More...
May 29, 2011
Eric
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I really enjoyed this book, it was probably right between 3 and 4 stars for me. It was unflaggingly engaging and clearly written and made me think about the way that language potentially effects the way that I engage with the world. I have always wondered if babies can think without language. How do we think without language? Anybody have any insight to this question? This book didn't answer that question but it did demonstrate that language and culture in general can effect how and what we
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Jan 15, 2011
itpdx
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Fascinating! Deutscher's writing is clear and interesting with some humor thrown in. He explains about how culture affects language and how our native language affects memory, perception and associations as well as practical skills such as orientation.
In some languages there is no left, right, behind but everything is described as north, south of you and the speakers of the language develop an unerring sense of geographical direction.
He discusses that in some languages, even wor More...
In some languages there is no left, right, behind but everything is described as north, south of you and the speakers of the language develop an unerring sense of geographical direction.
He discusses that in some languages, even wor More...
