Guy Deutscher (1) (1969–)

I expected more from this book, not realizing that what I hoped to find has not yet been proven to be true. The author attempts to show that language can, indeed, influence how one thinks. Unfortunately he has to address the age-old questions of nature vs. nature. He gives a somewhat irreverent, and very entertaining history of the controversy of nature versus nurture in regards to language. The history he provides and how he debunks once sacred linguistics notions makes the book worth the read.
He uses the exploration of space, color and gender as the topics to make his claim that there is a slight significance to support the theory that language can influence the way we think.
His concluding paragraphs in the book are awesome!… (mere)

Intriguing exploration of how languages evolve, explaining how a super-simple primitive proto-language of basically just nouns and verbs could turn into the dizzyingly complex structures that all current languages have. As a side-benefit, he explains why people constantly (and for centuries) complain that language is being corrupted and weakened.

Lots of humor and interesting literary and historical references. Explanations are careful and pretty simple, but sometimes the reasoning is very long and involves long series of steps — a little hard for my addled brain to follow. So I skimmed over some bits. But I was left full of wonder about language and the linguists who study it.

Note: he does-not- attempt to explain how language first started: those first utterances of isolated words. He says there is no evidence to support any real theory about it. But based on what we know about how language has changed in the last 6000 years or so, he does have solid theories about how language could grow and become more complex. But if you’re hoping to learn how people first learned to speak at all, this is not the book. And he is saying, sadly, that there may never be a convincing explanation of how language first began.… (mere)