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Through the Language Glass

Through the Language Glass

By Guy Deutscher

Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. Picador, 2011.

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15 mins read

13 Key insights

A brief summary of Through the Language Glass

An exploration of whether our mother tongue affects the way we see the world, tracing how everyone from British prime ministers to Aboriginal tribes have contributed to our understanding of how language reflects culture and has power over our perceptions.

Key insights in Through the Language Glass

1
What do you get from this book? An illuminating journey into how language affects the way we perceive reality
2
Philosophers and linguists have long agonized over whether our mother tongue makes us think differently
3
The century-spanning investigation into the language of color was started by an unlikely figure—British Prime Minister William Gladstone
4
Lazarus Geiger reformulated the question of perception, developing a theory about the universal sequence of color terms
5
Small social and linguistic groups from around the world offered clues that culture was behind the ancients’ peculiar color sense
6
Berlin and Kay discovered that there are “truer” versions of a color around which languages tend to coalesce
7
“Complexity” in language is difficult to define, and the smaller languages of “simpler” peoples can often pack the most meaning
8
The “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” states that our mother tongue limits our ability to understand complex ideas, but it has been rejected
9
The Guugu Yimithirr Aboriginal language and its speakers’ “mental compasses” show the power of language to drive patterns of thought
10
Grammatical gender seems to influence speakers’ associations with objects, while color vocabulary is once again in the linguistic limelight
11
Summary of the key insights
12
Selected critiques in brief
13
Final word

Who should read Through the Language Glass

Language learners • amateur psychologists • philosophers • artists • lovers of unusual trivia

About the author of Through the Language Glass

Guy Deutscher is a professor of the languages of Ancient Mesopotamia at the University of Leiden. He has written for The Times and The New York Times, while his other publications include The Unfolding of Language (2005).

author avatar

Guy Deutscher

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