Guy Deutscher Quotations

In fact, the book shows that language is in a rough state of equilibrium: some words disappear and some structures are eroded, but new ones are created at the same time, and these do the job just as well as the old ones, ... It is true, of course, that decay is one prominent force in the course of language evolution. But there are also forces of creation and generation operating at the same time.

and people believed that swearing falsely by a god would bring the terrible wrath of that god upon them.

This is a very tricky question, because ultimately no one knows where the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans was, and when they started spreading into Europe and Asia,

Language is mankind’s greatest invention – except, of course, that it was never invented.

And there are also languages that divide nouns into much more specific genders. The African language Supyire from Mali has five genders: humans, big things, small things, collectives, and liquids. Bantu languages such as Swahili have up to ten genders, and the Australian language Ngan’gityemerri is said to have fifteen different genders, which include, among others, masculine human, feminine human, canines, non-canine animals, vegetables, drinks, and two different genders for spears (depending on size and material).

As strange as it may sound, our experience of a Chagall painting actually depends to some extent on whether our language has a word for blue.