Through the Language Glass Quotes

“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”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“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.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“There are four tongues worthy of the world’s use,” says the Talmud: “Greek for song, Latin for war, Syriac for lamentation, and Hebrew for ordinary speech.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“When one is trying to speak a foreign language without years of schooling in its grammatical nuances, there is one survival strategy that one always falls back on: strip down to the bare essentials, do away with everything but the most critical content, ignore anything that’s not crucial for getting the basic meaning across. The aborigines who try to speak English do exactly that, not because their own language has no grammar but because the sophistication of their own mother tongue is of little use when struggling with a foreign language that they have not learned properly.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“His analysis showed that there was a significant correlation between the level of complexity of a society and the number of distinctions that are expressed inside the word. But contrary to what Joe, Piers, and Tom might expect, it was not the case that sophisticated societies tend to have sophisticated word structures. Quite the opposite: there is an inverse correlation between the complexity of society and of word structure! The simpler the society, the more information it is likely to mark within the word; the more complex the society, the fewer semantic distinctions it is likely to express word-internally.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“fluent speech, there are no real spaces between words, so when two words frequently appear together they can easily fuse into one.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“there is an inverse correlation between the complexity of society and of word structure!”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“people find names for things they feel the need to talk about.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“Jakobson gives the following example. If I say in English, “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor,” you may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we are speaking French or German or Russian, I don’t have the privilege to equivocate, because I am obliged by the language to choose between voisin or voisine, Nachbar or Nachbarin, sosed or sosedka. So French, German, and Russian would compel me to inform you about the sex of my companion whether or not I felt it was your business. This does not mean, of course, that English speakers are oblivious to the differences between evenings spent with male or female neighbors. Nor does it mean that English speakers cannot express the distinction should they want to. It only means that English speakers are not obliged to specify the sex each time the neighbor is mentioned, while speakers of some languages are.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“فالمشكلة هنا أن صعوبة تعلم لغة ما تعتمد بشكل أساسي على اللغة الأم لمتعلميها. فاللغة السويدية سهلة جداً -إن كنت نرويجياً، وكذلك الإسبانية إن كنت إيطالياً. لكن إذا كانت لغتك الأم هي الإنجليزية فلن تستسهل أياً من السويدية أو الإسبانية. لكنها تظل أسهل للناطقين باللغة الإنجليزية من اللغة العربية أو الصينية. فهل يعني ذلك أن اللغتين الصينية والعربية أصعب بشكل عام؟ لا، لأن العربية لن تكون صعبة عليك إن كانت لغتك الأم هي العبرية، وإن كانت لغتك الأم تايلندية، فستكون اللغة الصينية أسهل بالنسبة إليك من السويدية أو الإسبانية. وباختصار، ليست هناك طريقة واضحة لتعميم مقياس لدرجة التعقيد العام بالاعتماد على صعوبة تعلم اللغة، لأنها تعتمد على نقطة البداية التي تأخذها -مثلها مثل الجهد المبذول في السفر إلى أي مكان.”
― غاي دويتشر, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“Why should color, of all things, be at the center of so much crossfire? Perhaps because in meddling with such a deep and seemingly instinctive area of perception, culture camouflages itself as nature more successfully there than in any other area of language. There is nothing remotely abstract, theoretical, philosophical, hypothetical, or any other -cal, so it seems, about the difference between yellow and red or between green and blue.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“Franz Delitzsch, who put it most memorably when he wrote in 1878 that “we see in essence not with two eyes but with three: with the two eyes of the body and with the eye of the mind that is behind them. And it is in this eye of the mind in which the cultural-historical progressive development of the color sense takes place.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“...the Russian-American linguist Roman Jakobson encapsulated Boas’s insight into a pithy maxim: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” The crucial differences between languages, in other words, are not in what each language allows its speakers to express—for in theory any language could express anything—but in what information each language obliges it speakers to express.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“When one hears about acts of extraordinary bravery in combat, it is usually a sign that the battle has not been going terribly well. For when wars unfold according to plan and one's own side is winning, acts of exceptional individual heroism are rarely called for. Bravery is required mostly by the desperate side.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“The culturalists tried to make the idea more appealing by pointing out that even in modern languages we use idioms that are rather imprecise about color. Don’t we speak of “white wine,” for instance, even if we can see perfectly well that it is really yellowish green? Don’t we have “black cherries” that are dark red and “white cherries” that are yellowish red? Aren’t red squirrels really brown? Don’t the Italians call the yolk of an egg “red” (il rosso)? Don’t we call the color of orange juice “orange,” although it is in fact perfectly yellow? (Check it next time.)”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“Gender thus provides our second example of how the mother tongue influences thought.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“And there are also languages that divide nouns into much more specific genders. The African language Supyire from Mali has five genders: humans, big things, small things, collectives, and liquids. Bantu languages such as Swahili have up to ten genders, and the Australian language Ngan’gityemerri is said to have fifteen different genders, which include, among others, masculine human, feminine human, canines, non-canine animals, vegetables, drinks, and two different genders for spears (depending on size and material).”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“The real differences between languages, he argued, are not in what a language is able to express but rather in “what it encourages and stimulates its speakers to do from its own inner force.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“...ultimately, what common sense finds natural is what it is familiar with.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“Noam Chomsky has famously argued that a Martian scientist would conclude that all earthlings speak dialects of the same language.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, king of Spain, archduke of Austria, and master of several European tongues, professed to speaking “Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“يقال إن لغة شعب ما تعكس ثقافته وروحه ونمط تفكيره، فنجد أن استرخاء شعوب المناخات الاستوائية يدفعهم إلى الاستغناء عن العديد من الحروف الساكنة. كما يمكن مقارنة الأصوات البرتغالية الرقيقة بنظيرتها الإسبانية الحادة لفهم الاختلاف الجذري بين هاتين الثقافتين المتجاورتين. وتعجز بعض اللغات عن التعبير عن أفكار معقدة لفقدانها قواعد نحو منطقية بما فيه الكفاية. بعكس الألمانية مثلاً، التي تعد وسيلة مثالية لتشكيل أعمق وأدق الأفكار الفلسفية، لكونها لغة منظمة بشكل ملحوظ تنظيماً قد يكون السبب في كون الشعب الألماني شعباً منظماً فكرياً. (هل يستطيع أحد أن يتحمل الاستماع إلى تلك الأصوات الخرقاء ثقيلة الدم في طيها، كأنها خطوات الإوز؟)، بل تفتقر بعض اللغات إلى تصريف المستقبل فمن الطبيعي أن يعجز متحدثوها عن التفكير المستقبلي. وقد يستحيل على البابليين فهم رواية الجريمة والعقاب حيث تستخدم اللغة البابلية مصطلحاً واحداً للتعبير عن المعنيين. وتبدو الأجراف البحرية للنرويج جلية في نغمات لغتهم المائلة والمنحدرة، ويمكنك سماع اللام الروسية الكئيبة في ألحان تشايكوفسكي الحزينة. والفرنسية ليست لغة رومانسية وحسب بل هي لغة رومانسية (عاطفية) بامتياز. والإنجليزية لغة قابلة للتكيف بل قد تكون لعوبة. أما الإيطالية -آه الإيطالية. تلك الأحاديث البسيطة عن سمات اللغة المختلفة وطباع ناطقيها تعد من أكثر المواضيع تسلية حول مائدة الطعام، غير أنه بمجرد انتقال تلك النقاشات من حميمية مائدة الطعام إلى برودة جو المكتبة فإنها سرعان ما تنهار ككعكة حكايات جوفاء، مسلية وغير جدية في أفضل الأحوال، متعصبة وسخيفة في أسوئها. فيعجز معظم الأجانب التفرقة بين اللغة النرويجية الوعرة والسهول الممتدة للغة السويدية. وتسقط الحروف الساكنة من الشعوب الدنماركية البروتستانتية الكادحة على تربتهم الجليدية أكثر من مثيلتها في أي من القبائل الاستوائية الكسولة. وإذا كانت العقول الألمانية عقولاً منظمة فقد يكون سبب ذلك غرابة لغتهم الأم التي أهلكت عقولهم فلم تترك لهم مجالاً لتحمل أي شذوذ آخر. ويتمكن الناطقون باللغة الإنجليزية من الاسترسال في أحاديث طويلة عن أحداث مستقبلية مستخدمين الفعل المضارع (أسافر إلى فانكوفر الأسبوع المقبل) من دون أن يؤثر ذلك في قدرتهم على فهم المستقبل.”
― غاي دويتشر, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“Much of a language's complexity is not necessarily for effective communication.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“Mankind’s perception of color, he says, increased “according to the schema of the color spectrum”: first came the sensitivity to red, then to yellow, then to green, and only finally to blue and violet. The most remarkable thing about it all, he adds, is that this development seems to have occurred in exactly the same order in different cultures all over the world. Thus, in Geiger’s hands, Gladstone’s discoveries about”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“So if you, O subsequent ones, ever deign to look down at us from your summit of effortless superiority, remember that you have only scaled it on the back of our efforts. For it is thankless to grope in the dark and tempting to rest until the light of understanding shines upon us. But if we are led into this temptation, your kingdom will never come.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“When a language treats inanimate objects in the same way as it treats women and men, with the same grammatical forms or with the same “he” and “she” pronouns, the habits of grammar can spill over to habits of mind beyond grammar. The grammatical nexus between object and gender is imposed on children from the earliest age and reinforced many thousands of times throughout their lives. This constant drilling affects the associations that speakers develop about inanimate objects and can clothe their notions of such objects in womanly or manly traits. The evidence suggests that sex-related associations are not only fabricated on demand but present even when they are not actively solicited.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“Now imagine that an anthropologist specializing in primitive cultures beams herself down to the natives in Silicon Valley, whose way of life has not advanced a kilobyte beyond the Google age and whose tools have remained just as primitive as they were in the twenty-first century. She brings along with her a tray of taste samples called the Munsell Taste System. On it are representative samples of the whole taste space, 1,024 little fruit cubes that automatically reconstitute themselves on the tray the moment one picks them up. She asks the natives to try each of these and tell her the name of the taste in their language, and she is astonished at the abject poverty of their fructiferous vocabulary. She cannot comprehend why they are struggling to describe the taste samples, why their only abstract taste concepts are limited to the crudest oppositions such as “sweet” and “sour,” and why the only other descriptions they manage to come up with are “it’s a bit like an X,” where X is the name of a certain legacy fruit. She begins to suspect that their taste buds have not yet fully evolved. But when she tests the natives, she establishes that they are fully capable of telling the difference between any two cubes in her sample. There is obviously nothing wrong with their tongue, but why then is their langue so defective?
Let’s try to help her. Suppose you are one of those natives and she has just given you a cube that tastes like nothing you’ve ever tried before. Still, it vaguely reminds you of something. For a while you struggle to remember, then it dawns on you that this taste is slightly similar to those wild strawberries you had in a Parisian restaurant once, only this taste seems ten times more pronounced and is blended with a few other things that you can’t identify. So finally you say, very hesitantly, that “it’s a bit like wild strawberries.” Since you look like a particularly intelligent and articulate native, the anthropologist cannot resist posing a meta-question: doesn’t it feel odd and limiting, she asks, not to have precise vocabulary to describe tastes in the region of wild strawberries? You tell her that the only things “in the region of wild strawberry” that you’ve ever tasted before were wild strawberries, and that it has never crossed your mind that the taste of wild strawberries should need any more general or abstract description than “the taste of wild strawberries.” She smiles with baffled incomprehension.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

“Why does the egocentric system feel so much easier and more natural to handle? Simply because we always know where ‘in front of’ us is and where ‘behind’ and ‘left’ and ‘right’ are. We don’t need a map or a compass to work this out, we don’t need to look at the sun or the North Star, we just feel it, because the egocentric system of coordinates is based directly on our own body and our immediate visual field.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages

“It goes without saying that genders are language’s gift to poets. Heine’s masculine pine tree longs for the feminine palm; Boris Pasternak’s My Sister Life can work only because “life” is feminine in Russian; 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 that he evokes between “him” (the man) and “her” (the sea); nor 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”—the English “it caresses it, kisses it, drenches it, pounds its chest” is not quite the same.”
― Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages