Here is a waaaaay long overdue book log. This is by far the first non-fiction book I read this year and I'm usually a lot slower navigating my through non-fiction books.
*Do note that this book log is solely a personal way for me to keep track of the books I've read. I'm not seeking to write a thorough nor complete book summary and review. I'll stick a link or two of really well-summarised or reviewed articles down below.*
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BOOK #6: Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher
I would say that this book charts the course of the study of language, from how it first started until the present day, where we are at. To look at language and what the differences between the languages tell us, Guy Deutscher looked primarily at the discussion of a few themes: colour, direction, and then gender. The section on colour was extremely comprehensive, starting with William Ewart Gladstone and his observation of how there were not many references to colour in writings by Homer. It then takes decades if not centuries before the discussion around this was picked up by more academics.
Along the way of the discourse about colour, it expanded more generally to colours that exist in different languages, and how the experiments about colour in different languages became less callous and more refined.
Direction and gender were also interesting in their own right. Guy Deutscher explained that there are groups of people who describe direction using geographical means rather than egocentric means. The latter refers to us pointing to objects based on where we are located. I would say that the window is to my left and the door is in front of me, for instance. However, for the former, and in the case of the Guugu Yimithirr people, they make use of cardinal directions instead.
In some languages, nouns are attached to specific genders. In German for instance, a bridge is feminine, a table is masculine, and a bed is neutral. Interestingly, the genders for these objects, and also more abstract ideas at large are frequently not the same across the other languages, like French, or Spanish. There have been experiments to see if the genders of such nouns influence the way native speakers think about objects and the world around them. And there was something about the experiments having to be refined because some of them were conducted in a way that were not fully comprehensive or conclusive or something.
All in all, I think this book is a very good resource in learning about how the human understanding of language has evolved over centuries. I'm not sure I would pick this book up again so soon. But it would definitely stay rent-free in my mind for a long time.
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This blog has sums the book up pretty good - https://blog.12min.com/through-the-language-glass-summary/
And here is a New York Times' review on the book - https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/books/review/Bickerton-t.html
And to join the fray is a Guardian review - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/nov/08/through-language-glass-guy-deutscher-review
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