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A Book lush, rich in anecdotes, examples and uniqueness of the interaction between language and perception curious

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In April 2002, a list of major magazine has given Lloyd sending a sex change, changing the water pronoun "it." According to Guy Deutscher, "" she "was on the platform." There, in a sentence, has the charm of this book anecdote, humor relevant and relaxed sense of unease that the author is always one step ahead

As a journalist covering the waterfront, I loved the list of Lloyd. In its pages are printed near the shipping registered in both the world and its tragedies (in their beds and columns of death, so to speak). But editorial Fiat could not change the mind of a generation that metaphorically pushed the boat and waited for his vessel to enter, which attracted the tide and sailed against the wind, who grew up with Captain Marryat, CS Forester and Joseph Conrad . For these people, the English ships display feminine grace, not because one of the bulk carriers, barges or ships of war is inherently feminine, but because some said linguistic conventions for thousands of years after the Norman Conquest, the English language remains "it" for shipping, as well as nearly all castrated inanimate thing, including trees.

In this way, the logic is obvious: of course, a language which confers masculinity in a pin, but femininity in a palm tree would be able to play with the images that can not make sense translated into a language that did not. Deutscher book begins with the promise to break the intellectual matters, and subvert simplistic anecdotal demonstration of how our language defines or limits of our thought, then, confirms that in very limited circumstances, it is almost certain to shape the way see the world. The book is a joyful and unexpected intellectual journey through the strange interaction between language and the world tries to describe the language. the heart is an old riddle. Why the sea of ??Homer, "color of wine?" The Greeks have a word for the color blue? William Ewart Gladstone, and a former finance minister, not a Prime Minister, published in 1849, one of 1700 pages three volumes on the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and ended with a chapter on the perception of Homer and the use of color.

According to Deutscher, is deeply affected "the development of at least three academic disciplines" and started a war on the linguistic link between culture and nature, 150 years later, still in trouble. For Gladstone was inclined to think that because the Greek language that offers a limited visual range, then perhaps the perception of color had not developed, perhaps the ancient Greeks saw the world in black and white than Technicolor



This hypothesis could - to some extent - to the test may be other "primitive" cultures maintained the same disability? Imperialist and expansionist Europe America will not run out of subjects.

Tim Radford Book reflection the geographical address: Our place in the order of things is posted by Fourth Estate