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Guy Deutscher

Guy Deutscher Biography

Linguist

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“When one hears about acts of extraordinary bravery in combat, it is usually a sign that the battle has not been going terribly well. For when wars unfold according to plan and one's own side is winning, acts of exceptional individual heroism are rarely called for. Bravery is required mostly by the desperate side.”

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Book:Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
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“Now imagine that an anthropologist specializing in primitive cultures beams herself down to the natives in Silicon Valley, whose way of life has not advanced a kilobyte beyond the Google age and whose tools have remained just as primitive as they were in the twenty-first century. She brings along with her a tray of taste samples called the Munsell Taste System. On it are representative samples of the whole taste space, 1,024 little fruit cubes that automatically reconstitute themselves on the tray the moment one picks them up. She asks the natives to try each of these and tell her the name of the taste in their language, and she is astonished at the abject poverty of their fructiferous vocabulary. She cannot comprehend why they are struggling to describe the taste samples, why their only abstract taste concepts are limited to the crudest oppositions such as “sweet” and “sour,” and why the only other descriptions they manage to come up with are “it’s a bit like an X,” where X is the name of a certain legacy fruit. She begins to suspect that their taste buds have not yet fully evolved. But when she tests the natives, she establishes that they are fully capable of telling the difference between any two cubes in her sample. There is obviously nothing wrong with their tongue, but why then is their langue so defective? Let’s try to help her. Suppose you are one of those natives and she has just given you a cube that tastes like nothing you’ve ever tried before. Still, it vaguely reminds you of something. For a while you struggle to remember, then it dawns on you that this taste is slightly similar to those wild strawberries you had in a Parisian restaurant once, only this taste seems ten times more pronounced and is blended with a few other things that you can’t identify. So finally you say, very hesitantly, that “it’s a bit like wild strawberries.” Since you look like a particularly intelligent and articulate native, the anthropologist cannot resist posing a meta-question: doesn’t it feel odd and limiting, she asks, not to have precise vocabulary to describe tastes in the region of wild strawberries? You tell her that the only things “in the region of wild strawberry” that you’ve ever tasted before were wild strawberries, and that it has never crossed your mind that the taste of wild strawberries should need any more general or abstract description than “the taste of wild strawberries.” She smiles with baffled incomprehension.”

Linguistic Relativity
Book:Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
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“So if you, O subsequent ones, ever deign to look down at us from your summit of effortless superiority, remember that you have only scaled it on the back of our efforts. For it is thankless to grope in the dark and tempting to rest until the light of understanding shines upon us. But if we are led into this temptation, your kingdom will never come.”

LightUnderstandingDarkKnowledgeResearchTemptationKingdomSuperioritySummitEffortsGrope
Book:Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
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“Pek çok dilde kırmızı rengin adı "kan" kelimesinden türemiştir. İlginçtir, bu dilsel bağlantı kuşaklar boyunca Kitabı Mukaddes tefsircilerinin kafasını yormuştur, çünkü söz konusu olan insanlığın atasının adıdır. Kitabı Mukaddes etmiolojisine göre Adem adını yapıldığı adamah denen kırmızı çamurdan alır. Ama adamah kelimesi de Sami kökenli adam, yani "kırmızı" kelimesinden gelir ve bu kelimenin de kökeninde dam yani "kan kelimesi vardır.”

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Book:Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
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“And there are also languages that divide nouns into much more specific genders. The African language Supyire from Mali has five genders: humans, big things, small things, collectives, and liquids. Bantu languages such as Swahili have up to ten genders, and the Australian language Ngan’gityemerri is said to have fifteen different genders, which include, among others, masculine human, feminine human, canines, non-canine animals, vegetables, drinks, and two different genders for spears (depending on size and material).”

HumansSaidTwoDifferentBigsLanguageAnimalFiveMaterialsDrinkTenSizeGenderCollectivesFeminineDividesVegetablesFifteenBig ThingsMasculineSmall ThingsAustralianLiquidSpearsCanineNounsMali
Author:Guy Deutscher
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