Guy Deutscher - Through the Language Glass, Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

I am extremely grateful to those friends who gave generously of their time to read earlier drafts of the entire book, and whose insights and suggestions saved me from copious blunders and inspired many improvements: Jennie Barbour, Michal Deutscher, Andreas Dorschel, Avrahamit Edan, Stephen Fry, Bert Kouwenberg, Peter Matthews, Ferdinand von Mengden, Anna Morpurgo Davies, Reviel Netz, Uri Rom, Jan Hendrik Schmidt, Michael Steen, and Balázs Szendr i.

The manuscript benefited enormously from the professional scrutiny of my agent, Caroline Dawnay, and my editors, Drummond Moir, Jonathan Beck, and above all Sara Bershtel, whose incisive insertions and excisions were invaluable for navigating out of numerous cul-de-sacs and wrong turnings. I am grateful to all of them, as well as to Zoë Pagnamenta, my copy editor Roslyn Schloss, and Grigory Tovbis at Metropolitan.

I would also like to thank all those who provided helpful information or corrections, especially Sasha Aikhenvald, Mira Ariel, Eleanor Coghill, Bob Dixon, David Fleck, Luca Grillo, Kristina Henschke, Yaron Matras, Robert Meekings, John Mollon, Jan Erik Olsén, Jan Schnupp, Eva Schultze-Berndt, Kriszta Szendr i, Thomas Widlok, Gábor Zemplén.

Most of all, I am grateful to Janie Steen, whose help cannot be quantified, and without whom the book would never have happened.

G.D., April 2010

1. Holmgren color blindness test: courtesy of the College of Optometrists, London

2. Rainbow over trees © Pekka Parviainen / Science Photo Library

3. Field of poppies © Andrzej Tokarski / Alamy

4, 5. Color systems: Martin Lubikowski

6. Berlin and Kay set: Hale Color Consultants, courtesy of Nick Hale

7. Japanese traffic light hues: see note

8. Russian blues: Winawer et al. 2007 (adapted by Martin Lubikowski)

9. Circle of squares: Gilbert et al. 2006 (adapted by Martin Lubikowski)

10. Colors in Chinese: Tan et al. 2008 (adapted by Martin Lubikowski)

11. The visible spectrum © Universal Images Group Limited / Alamy

12. Sensitivity cones: Martin Lubikowski

train crash in Lagerlunda: Swedish Railway Museum

W. H. R. Rivers: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

Edward Sapir: Florence Hendershot

Franz Boas: National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

Roman Jakobson: Peter Cunningham

George Stubbs’s “Kongouro”: New Zealand Electronic Text Centre

Levinson 2004 (adapted by Martin Lubikowski)

Martin Lubikowski

Cognitive Science Lab, VC Riverside (adapted by Martin Lubikowski)

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

abstract vocabulary

Académie française

Account of the Voyages (Cook)

acquired characteristics

belief in vertical transmission of

inheritance of

adult language learners

African languages

After Babel (Steiner)

Akkadian

Allen, Grant

Almquist, Ernst

American Indian languages

American structural linguistics

ancient languages

color and

complexity and

gender systems and

subordination and

verbal forms and

vocabulary size and

animate vs. inanimate objects, gender systems and

anthropology

Arabic

Aramaic

Aristotle

Assembly of German Naturalists and Physicians

Assyrians

Australian aboriginal languages

coordinate systems and

gender systems and

grammar and

vocabulary size and

vowels in

“Awful German Language, The” (Twain)

Babylonian

Bacon, Francis

Bage, Roger

Balinese

Bambi, Jack

Bantu languages

Basic Color Terms (Berlin and Kay)

Basque

Bastian, Adolf

Baudelaire, Charles

Bauer, Laurie

Bellona atoll

Berlin, Brent

Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory

Bible

bipolar division of nature

“black”

“blue” and

Homer and

“white” and (light and dark)

blindness, See also color blindness

Bloomfield, Leonard

“blue”

“black” used for

etymology of

eye sensitivity to

Geiger sequence and

“-green” distinction

Homer and

impact of language on perception of

Russian siniy-goluboy distinction and

sky as

wavelength of

blue-yellow color blindness

Boas, Franz

Boas-Jakobson principle

body parts

Boroditsky, Lera

borrowed words

Botswana

brain. See also thought, influence of language on

color perception and

grammar encoding in

hemispheres of

linguistic areas in

research on language and thought and

retina, light wavelengths, and color perception and

bright-dark distinction, See also “black”; “white”

British Museum

Broca, Pierre Paul

“brown”

Brunetière, Ferdinand

Burma

Bushmen

cases and case endings

categorization

Central American Indian languages

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

children

acquisition of language and

color distinctions and

coordinate systems and

grammar rules and

Chinese

Chinook

Chomsky, Noam

Christianity

Chukchis

Cicero

clicks

Clifford, William Kingdon

color. See also specific colors, cultures, and languages

ancients and

animals and

artificial dyes and

Berlin and Kay and “foci” of

Bible and

biological factors vs. language and

children and

as cultural convention

culture-nature debate and

etymology and

evolution of, culturally

evolution of primates and

experiments on brain and

“freedom within constraints” and

Geiger sequence and

Gladstone on Homer and

idioms of, in modern languages

Indian Vedic poems and

influence of language on perception of

Magnus on evolution of

primitive people and

recent science on anatomical constraints and

retina, light wavelengths, and brain, and

color blindness

“color constancy”

“color matching”

color space, asymmetry of

Compleat Linguist, The (Henley)

complements, finite

complexity

morphology and

sound systems and

subordination and

concepts, See also specific types

Condillac, Étienne de

cones

color blindness and

evolution of, in primates

long-, middle-, and short-wave

number of

peak sensitivities of

Conklin, Harold

consonants

Cook, James

Cooktown Herald

coordinate systems. See spatial coordinate systems

correlation vs. causation

Course in Modern Linguistics, A (Hockett)

Crawfurd, John

“crime” and “punishment”

Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)

Crow system

culturalists

culture-nature debate, See also thought, influence of language on; and specific aspects of grammar and vocabulary, languages, and theorists

Aristotle on language and