- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: William Heinemann (July 5 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 043401690X
- ISBN-13: 978-0434016907
- Product Dimensions: 16 x 2.9 x 24 cm
- Shipping Weight: 680 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #561,097 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
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.
About the Author
Guy Deutscher is the author of The Unfolding of Language: The Evolution of Mankind's Greatest Invention. 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 Manchester. Through the Language Glass is his third book. He lives in Oxford with his wife and two daughters.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Through Wine-Tinted Glasses, Aug 26 2010
By takingadayoff "takingadayoff" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour Your World (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. David Harrison, and Harrison's documentary, The Linguists.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Language Expert Looks At Culture, Oct 10 2011
By J'nell L. Pate "J'Nell L. Pate" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages (Paperback)
This book discusses how a group's language can affect (or not) their differences in culture from others. Culture is more a result of the place and situation into which a person is born than any differences in intellect. Tribes living in a primitive culture do not necessarly have a primitive language. Their communication with each other may be complex. This was the most surprising message this reader took from the book.However, some languages reveal more about a person's life than others. Many more languages have male and female words than the English language does, thereby revealing more in conversations than does English.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating study of how our language shapes how we see the world, April 3 2011
By Helen Hancox "Auntie Helen" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages (Paperback)
This isn't the usual sort of book that I review - Language & Linguistics is a bit more upmarket than the usual romance or vampire novels that I tend to read. However, I was browsing in a bookshop in Berlin and among the `Englische Bücher' I saw this book featured. It had an endorsement on the front by Stephen Fry so I thought I'd give it a go.I'm really glad I did as reading this book opened up a whole new way of looking at things. Guy Deutscher looks in detail at how the language we speak may colour our view of the world - focusing on colour and how we name/see it (from the Greek Iliad and the wine-dark sea to how Russians react to different shades of blue) and how position of objects can be described in different ways depending on how your culture marks out place. There was so much packed into this book that I found myself hooked, reading it until late in the night and going back to read some sections again.
The language examples are from a vast array of languages - modern European ones with which we may be familiar to some of the much less well-known tongues from the antipodes and further. Although the author is an academic this book was fun, engaging, warm and in no way dry and dusty.
I also think it worth mentioning that the quality of the writing was absolutely excellent. Deutscher's English is lovely, with a great turn of phrase. All the more amazing when you discover that his mother tongue is Hebrew and so English is a second language to him. I was really impressed by the way that he could express himself in English whilst explaining how something may seem to him as someone who sees the world through a Hebrew mind.
I heartily recommend this book to anyone with the faintest of interest in language, linguistics, colours and more.
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