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Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour your World [Hardcover]

Guy Deutscher (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Publication Date: 3 Jun 2010

Generalisations about language and culture are at best amusing and meaningless, but is there anything sensible left to be said about the relation between language, culture and thought?

*Does language reflect the culture of a society?

*Is our mother-tongue a lens through which we perceive the world?

*Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts?

In Through the Language Glass, acclaimed author Guy Deutscher will convince you that, contrary to the fashionable academic consensus of today, the answer to all these questions is - yes. On an odyssey that takes us from Homer to Darwin, from scientists to savages, from the corridors of Yale to the rivers of the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water - a 'she' - become a 'he' once you have dipped a tea bag into her, this book explores some of the most fascinating and controversial questions about language, culture and the human mind.

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Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour your World + The Unfolding Of Language: The Evolution of Mankind`s greatest Invention + Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: William Heinemann; First Edition edition (3 Jun 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 043401690X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0434016907
  • Product Dimensions: 16 x 2.9 x 24 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 257,090 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Guy Deutscher
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Review

"Jaw-droppingly wonderful... A marvellous and surprising book which left me breathless and dizzy with delight. The ironic, playful tone at the beginning gradates into something serious that is never pompous, intellectually and historically complex and yet always pellucidly laid out. Plus I learned the word plaidoyer which I shall do my utmost to use every day..." (Stephen Fry )

This fabulously interesting book describes an area of intellectual history replete with brilliant leaps of intuition and crazy dead ends. Guy Deutscher, who combines enthusiasm with scholarly pugnacity...is a vigorous and engaging guide to it...a remarkably rich, provocative and intelligent work of pop science. (Sam Leith Sunday Times )

brilliant... As befits a book about language, this inspiring amalgam of cultural history and science is beautifully written. (Clive Cookson Financial Times )

so robustly researched and wonderfully told that it is hard to put down...Deutscher...brings together more than a century's worth of captivating characters, incidents and experiments that illuminate the relationship between words and mind (New Scientist )

A delight to read (Spectator )

Book Description

A brilliant and provocative exploration of how the cultures we live in affect the languages we speak and how we think of the world around us.
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
108 of 110 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent - a must for anyone interested in language 5 Jun 2010
By Peter Biddlecombe TOP 1000 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover
This book takes a couple of old ideas about language that seem ludicrous and discredited, and shows that there is something in them. If you have read Deutscher's "Unfolding of Language", the first thing to know about this book is that it's much easier to understand - I read it all in one sitting, which I can't imagine doing with the earlier book because of the fairly hard going when discussing technicalities of grammar.

One issue seems rather dry and academic, but turns out to be anything but - names for colours and their development over time, starting with a book about Homer, by Gladstone (yes, the Victorian PM), which drew conclusions about colour perception by the Ancient Greeks from descriptions like "wine-dark sea". Similar discredited notions are ideas like speakers of languages with complex sets of tenses having a more highly-developed notion of time than those who use fewer tenses or none at all. Deutscher shows how the desire to get rid of silly nonsense has resulted in some equally silly nonsense, like the tenet that all languages are "equally complex" whether they belong to an 'advanced' Western civilisation or a 'primitive' aboriginal group. Far more acceptable of course than the notion that the 'primitive' language reflects racial inferiority, but still nonsense, because we have no way of measuring how complex a language is - we may as well say that all languages are equally green.

The other dodgy old notion is that your mother tongue affects the way you think. Deutscher shows that in a few ways, it actually does.... Read more ›
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Through Wine-Tinted Glasses 3 Sep 2010
By takingadayoff TOP 1000 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover
In some cultures, there is a single word that denotes both blue and green. The people in these cultures can see the difference between the colors as well as anyone else, but they don't consider blue and green different colors, just different shades of the same color. In Russian, there is a word for dark blue and another word for sky blue. We who did not grow up speaking Russian do not confuse dark blue and light blue any more than Russians do, even if we call them both "blue."

How a language deals with colors is just one of the ways that linguist Guy Deutscher examines the interplay between language and thought. For many years, it was THE controversy in linguistic circles. But even if the phrases "Sapir-Whorf" and "Chomskian grammar" do not make you see red or any other color, you will find Deutscher's investigations into how language affects thought and vice versa, fascinating and enlightening.

He discusses why, in the Iliad, Homer described both the sea and oxen as being "wine-colored." He describes a society in which the people use points of the compass to describe locations rather than "left" and "right," and how that affects their sense of place.

Through the Language Glass had me seriously questioning what I thought I knew about language. Deutscher challenges conventional linguistic theories and seems to have a great time doing it. Through the Language Glass is the kind of book that you want to share with everyone and find out what they think about it, too. Is Deutscher crazy? Is he brilliant? Both, probably.

Also recommended -- When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge by K.... Read more ›
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Lively history of language; less persuasive conclusions. 3 Feb 2011
By EMcD
Format:Hardcover
Through the Language Glass Guy Deutscher 2010

The author has an elegant classical writing style and I bought the book at his Wandsworth Arts Festival presentation last autumn.

Deutscher gives a fascinating introductory tour d'horizon of linguistics and its history. He shows how views have veered from stressing the commonality of languages to Whorf's ideas on different languages defining radically different perceptions of reality in different tribes and peoples.

But the author's style is more that of a populariser rather than a scientist, and the book alludes to studies and evidence rather than originating anything new. In my view, his conclusions are rather tame and (as he would no doubt admit) need further evidential backing.

Deutscher's bold hypothesis is that in important ways language can affect not just how we describe the world, but how we actually perceive it (although he rejects Whorf's extreme views.) If this were the case in terms of eg major intellectual and cognitive concepts then it would be revolutionary. However his conclusions in three areas seem rather more marginal and perhaps disappointing given the build-up:-

- Colour perception Gladstone (yes the 19th c. P.M.) made a study in which he claimed the classical Greeks described the sea or sky as black or wine coloured. Deutscher claims modern studies show differences in colour perception in different nationalities, but the quoted examples merely show subtle differences in analysing shades of green, blue and grey ie. close neighbours on the colour spectrum . But this is hardly the same as someone describing a red apple as green and it could be pointed out that there are sometimes arguments within a language as to how to describe a colour in say, a specific picture.... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars good read :)
I loved every page. I would highly recomened anyone to read this book. The casual writing made an academic topic jovial.
Published 6 days ago by Daniel Noon
1.0 out of 5 stars Awful
I love languages, and when I saw the title of this book I was really excited by its content.

I never got further than the first twenty pages. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Jimmymanc
3.0 out of 5 stars 1
This was bought as a present for a student of linguistics. I have not read it myself so have no constructive comment.
Published 2 months ago by Elaine Coll
5.0 out of 5 stars PhD.
My daughter, teaching and completing her doctorate at Uni, enjoyed this. It is not diectly connected to her PhD but it links in with her interests. I might even read it myself.
Published 4 months ago by TillyTee
5.0 out of 5 stars Through The Language Glass
I was given this as a present, was so impressed I have since bought it for two more friends and lent it to several others. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Joyce Douglas
2.0 out of 5 stars Heavy on hyperbole, light on substance
The author knows his field: the book is carefully researched and, in many aspects, well written. But unfortunately Guy Deutscher gets carried away with his own cleverness; his... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Ross Smith
1.0 out of 5 stars Too difficult, too dense, too dull.
Overhyped and only for high brows. Such a pity, could have been interesting. Sorry to have wasted the money and the time trying to read it .
Published 5 months ago by Jennykenny
5.0 out of 5 stars A thought-provoking book
After reeading this, you will not look at the world in the same way again. The insight that the language you use influences how you see things is not new, but the detail here... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Peter Hulse
5.0 out of 5 stars Through the Language Glass
I received the book in very good conditioin, it seemed like new. I am very satisfied with the book. Thanks
Published 6 months ago by Ivana Cvetkovic
2.0 out of 5 stars Choice of Words
Oh dear. I really enjoy books on language and was looking forward to reading this, but I find its style hard to tolerate. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Andrew
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