Through the Language Glass
Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
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3.7 • 20 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The New York Times Editor's Choice
The Economist Best Book of 2010
A Financial Times Best Book of 2010
A Library Journal Best Book of 2010
“An informative, pleasurable read… A gifted writer, Deutscher picks his way nimbly past overblown arguments to a sensible compromise.”—The Boston Globe
From Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, and through a strange and dazzling history of the color blue, the leading linguist argues that our mother tongues do indeed shape our experiences of the world.
The debate is ages old: Where does language come from? Is it an artifact of our culture or written in our very DNA? In recent years, the leading linguists have seemingly settled the issue: all languages are fundamentally the same and the particular language we speak does not shape our thinking in any significant way. Guy Deutscher says they're wrong. Audacious, delightful, and provocative, Through the Language Glass is destined to become a classic of intellectual discovery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This fascinating pop-linguistics study contends that how we talk influences how we think about the world, from the way we give directions to the colors poets see. Drawing on everything from classics to anthropology and brain scans, linguist Deutscher (The Unfolding of Language) abjures the crude notion that language makes Italians frivolous or gives Hopis a mystical disregard for time. Rather, he insists that linguistic conventions subtly alter basic perceptions. The examples he highlights are delightful and thought-provoking: speakers of languages, such as French and German, in which inanimate objects have gender actually associate gendered qualities with objects; speakers of the Australian Guugu Yimithirr language denote spatial relationships by cardinal points " look out for that big ant just north of your foot'" and therefore develop an internal compass that puts a GPS to shame. The author upsets a few linguistics apple carts, challenging both Noam Chomsky's theory of an innate human grammar and Steven Pinker's view of language as a cognitively neutral system for representing the environment. Deutscher's erudite yet entertaining arguments (and cunning illustrations) usually stick; they make for a fascinating exploration of culture's ability to shape the mind. Photos.
Customer Reviews
Wonderfully entertaining if you're interested in languages and how they affect us.
I read it three years ago but forgot to review it. I still bring up and am consider some of the many interesting facts and deductions from this book.