Want to learn the ideas in Through the Language Glass better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher here.

Read a brief 1-Page Summary or watch video summaries curated by our expert team. Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book.

Video Summaries of Through the Language Glass

We’ve scoured the Internet for the very best videos on Through the Language Glass, from high-quality videos summaries to interviews or commentary by Guy Deutscher.

1-Page Summary of Through the Language Glass

Overview

Colors are a hot topic in language. Linguists have been debating the way colors are named for years, and that debate continues today.

There is a debate on whether language reflects culture or vice versa. For example, if a language doesn’t have a word for “tomorrow”, does that mean they don’t think about the future? Or is it just their way of life? The author takes you through examples and shows how languages can affect people’s thinking and perception.

In this passage, you’ll learn why there is no word for “blue” in Ancient Greek; why the word for “red” came before the word for “yellow”; and why Spaniards and Germans think of bridges differently.

This book is about how language affects the way we think and act. It’s a summary of other books that cover this topic.

Thought for Today: Everything Counts

Big Idea #1: Language reflects culture.

If you read the works of Ancient Greek poet Homer, you might have noticed that he doesn’t use a word to describe the color blue. This is because different cultures view colors differently. For example, Homer’s culture didn’t see as many shades of blue as we do today.

Based on the words for color used in The Iliad and The Odyssey, William Ewart Gladstone argued that ancient Greeks must have had different sense of colors than we do.

Gladstone, in his book Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, argued that the Greeks perceived the world as black-and-white instead of full color.

According to Gladstone, Homer wasn’t simply exercising poetic license when he chose his words—words that seem strange by today’s standards. Rather, like the rest of the Ancient Greeks, he had an undeveloped perception of color and could only see in black and white. This is why he described things like honey and freshly-picked twigs as chlôros (green), a color neither black nor white, to give a sense of their paleness and freshness.

In addition, Gladstone’s case is strengthened by the fact that Homer rarely made reference to color in his works. For example, he used black (melas) 170 times and yellow (xanthos) only ten times.

Gladstone claimed that there was a specific time in history when mankind had to learn how to see color. He believed this happened because artificial colors, like blue dyes and flowers, were not yet invented during the Ancient Greek era. This might explain why Homer never used a word for “blue.”

Big Idea #2: Lazarus Geiger got us asking if differences in language are related to arbitrary naming or to perception.

In 1867, philologist Lazarus Geiger claimed that the evolution of humankind could be traced through language. This is because other ancient texts, such as the Indian Vedas and the Bible, also treat color strangely.

Geiger’s postulation was significant because it transformed Gladstone’s discovery about a color deficiency in one ancient culture into an explanation of the evolution of color sense in the entire human race.

Interestingly, the same color words developed in every culture. After an awareness of dark and bright (black and white) comes a sensitivity to red, then yellow, then green and finally blue and violet.

Hugo Magnus was the first to propose that human retina became more sensitive to color with each generation. However, this theory is incorrect since it’s based on Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics.

The idea of Lamarckian inheritance served as the foundation for Hugo Magnus’ thesis that human retina developed its sensitivity to color via improvements in color perception inherited by subsequent generations.