Respond to The Linguists:

Language to its speakers means a lot because it holds the culture and tradition together. The way we speak out language affects the way we conceive the world. It is important to hold on to a language because it beings the people together as a nation and culture it makes them who they are. Learning new languages can be helpful because it helps us to realize the differences between other countries and the culture. It also helps us to understand what the people in that culture do, eat, where and how they live. Sometimes people misunderstand each other because of cultural differences and language so it is better if we can understand each others freedom and rights in the world so that we all can practice our culture, religion, customs, etc. I think that no one have the right to say that their language is better then others. 

Through The Language Glass: Summary #5

Deutscher mentioned how colors were formed in verbal expression. He said that in most languages the first color started with the color black, white, then red, then yellow-green, and finally blue. Many linguistic have been looking for ways to figure, if it is human nature or cultural conventions? Did people understand color after they became more civilized? Deutscher explains the discoveries of  colors and how  they were discovered, and how languages were understood by perceptions and then vocabularies. “Tested hundreds of people from different races and ethnic types, not just for vision but also for many other mental processes.” ( Deutscher 82). Psychologist and anthropology were trying to see if different race makes the people see things differently like colors and how they interpret things. They found out that “ the elementary brain activities, through differing in degree from one individual to another, are about the same from one race to another.” (Deutscher 82).  From this we can say that language and the society creates how we think about the world around us.

Through The langauge Glass Summary 4:

This chapter talks about color and how some language still could not distinguish between green and blue. In Burma, Tagalog speakers in Philippines does not recognize the color blue because blue to them is green. Teda tribe in Chad still did not distinguish green from blue at all. The chairman of the Berlin society for anthropology, ethnology, prehistory was trying to find out more about how a society or a region sees colors and how they are different. The Nubians from Sudan were shown the color blue, they were asked what color they see, and some say the color blue was black and other said green. Also the colors yellow, green, and gray all three colors are described by the same word. W.H.R Rivers a psychiatrist did research on colors and “how the color vision of the natives related to their vocabulary and weather the capacity for appreciating differences correlated with the power of expressing those differences in language.”(Deutscher 65-66). Rivers found out that these people were not colorblind, and knew the difference between colors but did not have names for them. "' seemed almost almost inexplicable, if blue were not to these natives a duller and a darker colour than it is to us.'"(Deutscher 67).  Europeans are better at telling the difference between blue and green then that of the natives.

Through the Language Glass summary # 3

Deutscher explains how color was discovered and how colors are discovered in different languages. He says that colors were understood by perceptions and later was used in words. Deutscher explains how our mother tongue “can affect how we think and how we perceive the world.” Some cultures have not paid much attention to color spectrum's and because of that there are limited colors. When William Gladstone, after studying Homer, suspected that artificial dye in classical Greece might have stimulated the color perceptions of ancient peoples. Before dyes were manufactured for shades of blue, the Greeks may not have been used to recognize a range of hues in their depths. He shows how languages may lack green-blue distinctions that in our native tongue appear as if natural to us.

prescriptivist or descriptivist

In the video clip it says how English language is constantly changing and that is because new things are created and so we need new names for them. Changes will happen through time, it’s unstoppable. Prescriptive believe that if the American language changes too much it will get harder for more people to learn and understand. A Prescriptive would think that it’s bad that the language is changing because the old words may be lost. But a Descriptive believe that the English language has changed over time and that they like to know new words that seem interesting to them and also the words that people might use more often.

Persentation Assignment

        In the book, Through the Language Glass, the author Guy Deutscher says, “a nation’s language, so we are often told, reflects its culture, psyche, and modes of thought.” Deutscher mentions that culture influences language and the way we think, and that different languages can guide people to think differently. He also tells us that some languages have future tense while others don’t and that is the reasons why sometimes people don’t think about the future. “We learn our mother tongue; we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways”. When we know a language we know the culture and history about it so we start thinking differently. He argues that culture and language does shape a person to think the way they do. Deutscher talks about language, cultural history and science in his book, for example he brings the theories of Darwin and Homer.
       Deutscher’s writing is strong because he was able to describe how Linguistics has a link between the language and the culture of its speakers. In the first chapter Deutscher had me thinking about the subject and really think deep about how culture influence language. In the book The Study of Language “The social interaction source” in page 3 it says “ the appeal of this proposal is that it places the development of human language in a social context [and] so, human sounds, however they were produced, must have had some principled use within the life and social interaction of early human groups.” Deutscher expands this idea to a bigger issue and gives details why the society and culture, which develops the way, people speck and think.

Neologisms: New Word

Zip-I-dy: to be quite

Kos-mask-tic:  being fake, supernatural

Through The Language Glass; Summary #2

In the first chapter, “ Naming the Rainbow” the author Guy Deutscher tells us about the theories from Homer and Darwin how people from different countries interpreter Homer and Darwin’s theories in certain ways. We Americans interpreted that Darwin’s theory of evolution is that all life is related and even we have a common descent ancestor. We also interpreted and understand his theory about survival of the fittest and natural selection. Even Hitler had his own way of interpreting Darwin’s theory and believed the theory about natural selection. This was one of the reasons why he chose to form a separation between Germans and other nationality and created a war among those who were different then them. Other countries, might disagree with Darwin’s theory of evolution and Homer’s epic. For example “Homer’s epic are for Gladstone nothing less then ‘the most extraordinary phenomenon in the whole history of purely human culture.’” (Deutscher 26). William Ewart Gladstone was a religious man; who draws information from Homer’s description of colors to a radical form. “What they did not say thus led him to remarkable discoveries about the cultural world of the ancient Greeks. The most sticking of these insights concerned Homer’s language of color.”(30 Deutscher). This explains that language creates the way people think and see things, like colors.

How to Pronouce my name:

My name is “Irani” it has a front high vowel "i", and the sound “i” is formed with the tongue tip behind the upper front teeth (dentals). It is voiced alveolar liquid "r" and  the central vowel upside down "e" which makes the sound “a” and the nasal sound “ni” at the end.

Through The Language Glass: Summary

            In the book, Through the Language Glass the author Guy Deutscher says in his Prologue “a nation’s language, so we are often told, reflects its culture, psyche, and modes of thought.” He compares the language Portuguese with Spanish even though they are almost the same there is a differences between the way Portuguese speck Spanish, than other Spanish countries. This is the reason why these countries have trouble understanding each other and think differently because of cultural differences. The reason why Germans have orderly minds and they think fast is because there language is orderly. Through out the prologue, Deutscher mentions that culture influences language and the way we think, and that different languages can guide people to think differently. He also tells us that some languages have future tense while others don’t and that is the reasons why sometimes people don’t think about the future. “We learn our mother tongue; we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways”. When we know a language we know the culture and history about it so we start think differently. He argues that culture and language does shape a person to think the way they do.

The book I chose: Through The Language Glass

The book I chose is: Though the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Deutscher Guy. I chose this book because the title made it seem interesting.  It also relates to an article we had for homework which was called “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” this was also written by Deutscher Guy. In this article the author tells us about how language effects the way people think and comprehend the world. I had never thought about this subject before until I took this class. I always speak the language I know, but I never thought about how it was created and how it can affect the way we think.  In Deutscher’s book Though the Language Glass he mentions why language is the way it is in each country and how people see the world in the other language, and how language affects our thoughts. What I expect to know after reading this book is if our language prevents us from certain thinking or do we think differently because we have different languages. “We learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways”(Deutscher). To me it seems that   the author is saying, that when we know a language we know the culture and history about it so we start thinking differently when we hear other languages.

Language Affect the Way we Think

                                        Language Affect the Way we Think

Languages are unique because of different cultural and social differences. They are taught as a child. Everyone has dialects that sounds different than others and that is because of the origin and social place they come from. Language can shape a person’s characteristics and thoughts.

Everyone in life has a person or a group of people that has influenced him or her the most.  For me, it was my parents who influenced me to understand my language and culture. They taught me to speak my native language (Bangla) and encouraged me to learn more about it. Even though I know how to speak and understand Bangla, I did not know how to write or read it. However, I speak English very well because I have been living here for a very long time. I also speak other languages like Hindi and a little bit of Spanish.

Most of the language I learned was for a purpose. I learned how to read Arabic at the mosque so that I can read the Quran. I was taught Spanish at school because it was a required class, but  either way I wanted to learn Spanish because many of my friends spoke Spanish and also I was eager to learn another language.  I  learned Hindi by watching Hindi movies; it was easier for me to understand Hindi because Bangla is almost similar to Hindi, just like Italian is almost similar to Spanish. Knowing many different languages can be helpful because it can help a person to communicate with others who do not speak the same language as them. By knowing different languages, it has helped me understand more about the culture and the society from that particular place.

            It is true that a child learns faster than adults and that is because children brains develop after birth and they are able to catch everything and is influenced by the environment. So that is why it is harder for them to learn a new language when they get older. Once we are exposed to a language and a place it is easier for us to understand the language itself. I think that languages and the accents have changed over time because long time ago, people used old English like the language of Shakespeare. Language does change over time because many times new vocabulary is added to a dictionary, so languages do change within time.

Guy Deutscher mentions in his article “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” about how language was created and how it can affect the way we think. I agree with Deutscher that language does change based on the grammar. Language definitely influences our ability to communicate, and sometimes the way we say something can totally be heard differently or mean something different to someone else.