Customer Reviews

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

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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.

The first foreign language I learned to complete fluency was German - after five years of high school German I spent a year at a German boys' boarding school. At the end of that year I was completely fluent, but noticed an odd phenomenon, that I felt like a slightly different person when I spoke German than when speaking English. Since then I've also learned Spanish to a high degree of fluency, and the same observation holds. In both cases, the main difference that I perceive has to do with humor, and the way the language I'm speaking affects my sense of humor. So I've always been interested in the extent to which language affects thought. The notion that it does is what linguists refer to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Belief in Sapir-Whorf reached its peak in the first half of the 20th century, but since then the notion that language affects cognition has been discredited by almost all mainstream linguists.

In "Through the Language Glass" Guy Deutscher mounts a careful, very limited defence of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. He considers three major areas - the link between language and color perception, how different languages deal with spatial orientation, and the phenomenon of differences in noun genders across different languages. His examination of the link between language and color perception is extensive and thought-provoking - he traces the development of linguistic theory on color perception from British prime minister Gladstone's commentary on the relative paucity of color terms in Homer's work, through the Berlin-Kay model (stating essentially that languages all tend to split up the color spectrum in similar ways) through very recent experiments suggesting that the existence of a particular color distinction in a language (e.g. the existence of separate terms in Russian for light and dark blue) affects the brain's ability to perceive that distinction. Deutscher's account of the evolution of linguistic theory about color perception is a tour de force of scientific writing for a general audience - it is both crystal clear and a pleasure to read.

Two factors contributed to my eventual disappointment with this book. The first is that, even after Deutscher's careful, eloquent, persuasive analysis, one's final reaction has to be a regretful "So what?" In the end, it all seems to amount to little of practical importance.

The second disappointment pertained only to the experience of reading this book on an Amazon Kindle. Reference is made throughout to a "color insert" which evidently contained several color wheels as well as up to a dozen color illustrations. This feature was completely absent from the Kindle edition, which had a severe adverse effect on the overall experience of reading this book. Obviously, this point is relevant only if you are contemplating reading the Kindle version - DON'T!

If it hadn't been for the lack of availability of key illustrations on the Kindle, I would have given the book 4 stars, but I feel obliged to deduct one because of the Kindle-related deficiencies.

How much does our culture determine, or liberate, our language's ability to express what we see? In his first book, "The Unfolding of Language," Deutscher mentioned how colors evolved in verbal expression from a primitive stage. Words entered language first for a binary black-white, later adding red, then yellow-green, and finally blue. But, he skimmed past this factoid as he rushed on to other theoretical matters. He returns to make this subject the heart of this sequel.

If language mirrors our mind, what is reflected? Is it human nature or cultural conventions? Color served, since the era of Darwin aroused clumsy curiosity whether linguistic responses might be innate, as a test case. Did color come about as the brain developed and became more civilized? Victorians wondered if languages developed by natural selection; anthropologists suggested language was filtered through culture. Scholars began to study diverse indigenous tongues that often differed dramatically from Indo-European languages.

Deutscher devotes the first hundred pages to explaining their discoveries of how colors in newly discovered languages were understood by perceptions and then vocabularies which revealed contrasts with the West. While these nineteenth-century models crudely linking Darwin to linguistics have been discarded, these inquiries opened Western ears to a global diversity of verbal and mental expression. Deutscher explains how our mother tongue "can affect how we think and how we perceive the world." He does not argue that language determines how we think. This distinction is crucial.

For, he rejects the "linguistic relativity" of the discredited Sapir-Whorf theory which claimed that language locks its speakers into a cognitive prison by which they must perceive, say, time differently. The Hopi may say "on the fifth day" rather than "five days," but mainstream scholars deny that this proves that the Hopi conceive time's accumulation of "unvarying repetition" differently than we do with our spatial models. This quickly turns theoretical, as the extended analyses of color vocabulary and then spatial orientation by geographic rather than egocentrical markers make the bulk of this text.

I felt that Deutscher's in-depth example of the Guugu Yimithirr aboriginal language--which in its isolated heyday indicated directions according to compass points rather than personal coordinates--appeared intriguing but less compelling than he intended. For, the speakers in both cases still orient themselves by their own internal placement. We may say a chair is to our left; they may say it is to the southwest, but we both are setting ourselves in relation to it. Deutscher appears to gloss this over.

He shows how languages may lack green-blue distinctions that in our native tongue appear as if natural to us. He suggests how taste can be an analogy: what if "wild strawberries" might be our only term for the whole range of new fruits a stranger brought us from a faraway land of berry extravagance? All we could do is compare each new varietal to more or less the one berry we had words to describe. By the scholar from Berry-Land we would be pitied as primitives, unable to comprehend the obvious range of fruit flavors.

Similarly, some cultures have not paid much attention to color spectrums. They did not feel the need to, as discernment may not have been necessary. This surmise began when William Gladstone, after studying Homer, surmised that artificial dye in classical Greece might have stimulated the color perceptions of ancient peoples. Before dyes were manufactured for shades of blue, the Greeks may not have been used to discern a range of hues in their depths (which appear instantly blue to us, or green due to our different cultural and linguistic habits) as other than a "wine-looking" or "wine-dark sea."

Whether Australian or Mediterranean, people tend to use the words they need for their world. If blue existed in sky or sea, it may not have been necessary to differentiate it. If it turned into an imported dye altering fashion or determining status, it then mattered to find a term for blue. (I invent this elaboration; "The cultural significance of blue," Deutscher admits as an aside, "is very limited." Such points deserved more analysis, considering that much of this book concerns color's linguistic applications.)

Yellow and green emerge later for many native cultures because agriculture and vegetation brought a greater awareness (ripe or unripe?) involved in sustenance. Black and white, day and night tend to come first for they are the most obvious contrasts. Red follows, as blood marks our encounters with each other and the natural world in which we compete and struggle.

The second section shifts to the impact of our mother tongue on how we think. It may influence our reactions without determining them: this qualification segues into the Boas-Jakobson alternative to Sapir-Whorf's model. Before this, Deutscher in one of his most compelling chapters compresses material that I thought more compelling than much of the previous hundred-plus pages on color.

This extends the essence of The Unfolding of Language (see my Oct 2007 review), even if he barely refers to his earlier book. How languages begin complex and then grow simpler--and then perhaps more complex again--appears to contradict what we might expect. Small societies rely on markers. Like the aborigines with their compass internalized in their language and their bodies in one place with the same solar and meteorological coordinates for thousands of years, people settled as relatives in one place speak by shorthand. As intimates, "she," "them," "here" and "over there" may be all that is needed to express what to a stranger would require precise yet wordier explanations of kinship, locale, or quirk.

When strangers arrive (perhaps traders of blue dye), they may speak a different accent or dialect. This forces locals to simplify words to communicate clearly. Comprehension between unfamiliar speakers of different languages may force a drastically minimal, almost childlike, manner of speech. More terms may be needed, such as "aquamarine" or "indigo," and these then enrich the local language. Concision, simplicity, and literacy often slow a language down in word forms and on paper. This is one reason why the spelling of English may preserve archaic sounds we no longer say, or why the gender distinctions of Romance languages persist in illogical forms, lovingly detailed in the best chapter, "Sex and Syntax."

The rest of the narrative lacks this intriguing scenario, however dimly sketched. But, Deutscher dutifully sums up current research in a manner that we non-linguists can appreciate. He shows, as in the gender situation, how German's feminine article for such a word as a bridge may influence somewhat the response, even in English, of traits attributed by a German speaker to "die Brücke" vs. a Spanish speaker's masculine "el puente". "German speakers tended to describe bridges as beautiful, elegant, fragile, peaceful, pretty, and slender; Spanish speakers as big, dangerous, long, strong, sturdy, towering." While Deutscher remains cautious about interpreting such findings, he does hint that "manly or womanly associations of inanimate objects are strong enough in the minds of Spanish and German speakers to affect their ability to commit information to memory."

Both of this author's books share this professor's lively anecdotes, his engaging personality, and his ability to summarize linguistic debates efficiently. He lets the rest of us, outside the academy, listen in on arcane arguments. Yet, as part of academia, Deutscher may let his love for theoretical excursion weaken the pace of his presentations.

He wraps up his latest work, after more color discussion and more cognitive experiments, with a summary of how culture conventions of our society can be influenced by language. We do not live in what from Nietzsche has been memorably mistranslated as a "prison-house of language." But, we do tend to find patterns and pursue expressions that fit with our habitual sights, sounds, and markers.

Deutscher closes by begging forgiveness from future scholars, for we are on the verge of brain discoveries about language processing even as thousands of languages die out. These may offer, as Guugu Yimithirr, fantastic alternatives we thinkers used to English might never have conceived. Our scientific progress accelerates, but we also need linguistic alternatives to our monocultural, globalizing mindset. None of us can step aside and find a perfect language to judge all the others by. Maybe we've built, in a determination to make everyone speak our native tongue, our own prison-house after all?

Overall this is an excellent and informative discussion of how language influences thought, and I enjoyed reading it. Unfortunately for Kindle readers, Mr. Deutscher dedicates a significant portion of the analysis to the words and perceptions of color. There are numerous references to colors in charts and diagrams that are undoubtedly easily viewed in the printed version of the book, but are either recreated in black and white or totally absent from the Kindle version. (The Kindle for Mac view does not compensate.) Had I known this, I would have refrained from buying the e-reader edition, and would have purchased the hard cover book instead. I assign an average rating of three stars as a blended evaluation; the text itself I would rate five stars; the Kindle version gets one.

I am not a linguist but interested in linguistic topics. Thus I enjoyed the book, basically accepting the statements and conclusions Deutscher makes, until reaching page 201 (hardcopy) referring to gender allocation in German. Even as a non linguist the statements made are obviously very misleading. Deutscher states that "women are much more often denied belonging to the feminine gender" in German. His examples are Das Fräulein, Das Mädchen, Das Frauenzimmer. However as a linguist he will know that the diminutives -lein and -chen are always neutral. This is regardless of the noun used. Thus Büblein (small boy), Männchen (small man), Bübchen (small boy) are neutral as well. Also his example Das Frauenzimmer is misleading. Combined nouns in German always use the article of the last part of the noun. In this case Zimmer is neutral, thus Frauenzimmer obviously as well. Other examples would be das Männerhaus (house where the men live): as Haus is neutral Männerhaus is as well. Concluding, these, even for a non linguits, very obvious and basic mistakes make me doubt in all the other statements made in his book. Therefore, although an easy to read book and a book with interesting topics just 2 stars from mys side. Sorry!

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 subject of how language affects thought or behavior. The intro and reviews (it was recommended on New York Times) made it sound like a book about language affecting thought. IT wasn't.

I liked Deutchers' writing style. He was easy to read and funny. I liked his use of many examples, and then defining the examples to make it REALLY easy to understand. However, he NEVER really defined how A Language makes ONE society's thought be different from another's. He talked a little bit how a language FORCES one to pay attention and speak in a specific way. I really loved his example of how some cultures only have N S E W directions instead of front, back, left right. I understand what he said. I liked his analysis on "how can all language be equally complex? they cant." But i wish there were more examples like that.

More than half of the book (waaay too much ) was devoted to how different societies define colors. For example, how many cultures only have one word for green and blue. Maybe it's just that many studies haven't been done on language and culture. I don't know. Then he devoted a TINY section of the book to sex of objects, but not enough.

This book should have been titled "Culture and Color." I would have been less let down if he JUST focused on color (he did so for more than half the book) and talk about other stuff (sex of objects, directions) in another book. "Through the Language Glass" was interesting, and well researched, but not what the book intro claimed to be about.

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages explores the influence of culture on language and perception, blending a wide-ranging history of different languages' development with a new investigation of linguistics. Traditional linguistics has claimed cultural differences between languages are only superficial: Guy Deutscher argues that different languages can lead to different ways of thinking entirely. His is a title highly recommended for any collection strong in linguistics and culture.

TtLG is terrifically written and enormously thought-provoking. Many things I read in this book I encountered for the first time (e.g., about Gladstone's massive study of Homer, in the 19th century, and the reverberations it has had in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, and the science of mind to this day -- a fascinating chapter in the history of science). Over the course of a few hundred quick-reading pages, GD mounts a compelling case for the hypothesis that language directly impacts perception. The claim is, of course, not unique to the author, who does a very fine job of situating it in the history of the linguistic and cognitive sciences. GD is careful to distinguish between what can be shown empirically and what inferences can reasonably be inferred from empirical data. If the judgment he metes out on his intellectual forebears -- Sapir and Whorf -- are, to my thinking, a bit too harsh, I appreciate his larger point: that theories must be built from the ground up, not the other way round, and that theorizing must proceed cautiously. In the end, GD finds it likely that there is a language/perception linkage in human cognition. Though my gut tells me he's probably right, GD's own cautions throughout alert me to regard the evidence he adduces with due skepticism. Quite possibly, some or all of it does point in the direction of the linkage he claims. This conclusion is not compelled by the evidence to date, however. There is a lot of room, in the current state of the art, for alternative hypothesizing.

Whatever. TtLG had me hooked from start to finish, and has left me with worlds to ponder. What more can one ask of a book? Read it!

"Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages" and the "Unfolding of Language" by Guy Deutscher are among the very best books I've ever read. My interest in the linguistic originates in the the interest in history and in the attempts to understand the process of the evolution of the apparently so much different modern nations from the common ancestors speaking the same language (read "The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History" by Colin McEvedy). But while finding history to be a vivid and fascinating subject I was thinking about linguistic as of a rather dry and boring thing. I am glad I was wrong. Guy Deutcher's books are a pleasure to read from the first to the last word and although they may not provide specific answers to all my original questions they open new dimensions that I wasn't even aware of before. And one more thing; these books make you think while reading, not force you to think but encourage in a very effective and enjoyable way. A pure brain stimulator. Highly recommended.

The book is really interesting. You can discover many things about how we can see and understand other cultures by understanding the way others express themselves.