Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

Do languages influence the way people think and act? This is a controversial topic in linguistics. Past attempts to look at this have been riddled with "supremacist" tendencies to show that "inferior" languages were used by inferior minds. This lead to a dismissal of most of these arguments. 

Another problem with comparing languages is the similarity of most of the languages being compared. The commonly studied Western European language have many elements in common. Much larger differences are found in aboriginal languages (many of which are dying out.)

One example given in the book was that of positioning. Positions are typically given relative to the person (left, right) or absolute (east, west). In English, we will switch between the two based on the situation. However, there are some languages that exclusively use absolute positions. This results in changes in how they view the world. They tend to have better ability to know the positioning wherever they are.

Other examples of differences are with gender. Some languages have strong genders, while others do not. German has gender for everything, but the gender does not necessarily correspond to what we would think of as the sexual gender. This can lead to some rich understanding in poetry that is missed when translated to English. There have also been studies showing impacts in reaction time with gender matching the appropriate gender.

Color is another element that differs from language to language. Some languages have common words for more colors, while others have fewer unique colors. While people can distinguish between the different colors, those without language distinction are more likely to mentally group the colors together.

This book scratches the surface of the impacts of language in thought. While any language could theoretically express any thought, some can do it much easier than other. While this is controversial in the realm of spoken languages, it is a regular argument in computer programming languages. Different languages are better for accomplishing certain tasks. Programs written in languages have different reputations. Languages like C# and VisualBasic tend to attract immature programmers, while C and Assembly are written by masters. Perl is great and text processing, but horrible at reusing. Even though C, Java and JavaScript have a similar base level syntax built on curly braces, they are all very different and used for different programs. Are there significant differences in human languages?

The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention

Tape recorders did not exist in the time of cavemen, making it difficult to know how language started. We can piece together some clues from written texts. However, by the time these texts came into being, language had already been around for some time. We can, however, look at how language has changed.

Often words start out with nouns used to represent a certain thing. Later, these may be adapted to refer to a property of the things. (For instance "orange" refers to both the fruit and the color orange.) Verbs come out of actions related to things. Grammatical constructs arise from different words. These are often simplified as they become more common. ("gonna" is an example today.)

In the past, people would often refer to a rise or decline of language. However, language often changes in more of a loop. Commonly used words may see the sound collapse. Later emphasis may be added bringing back a greater sound. A words may be combined and added, and then later separated. Sounds may change based on patterns of similarity or ease of pronunciation.

This book has an interesting exploration of how language is changing, has changed and may have changed in the past.