A Myriad of Tongues

In the Amazonian region of Brazil, where anthropologist Caleb Everett spent much of his childhood, speakers of Tupi-Kawahíb never refer to time ‘passing by.’ Indeed, the language has no word for ‘time.’ By contrast, most European languages have few abstract words for odours, whereas languages in a number of other cultures have more than a dozen. Everett’s fascinating book—based on collaboration with biologists, chemists, political scientists and engineers—ponders such differences between the world’s 7,000-plus languages. -- Andrew Robinson * Nature * An assured guide to new thinking about how language shapes the way we see the world—at a time when thousands of languages are vanishing. -- Colin Barras * New Scientist * Historically, academics have looked for commonalities among languages and focused mainly on those used by Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies. But, Everett says, the tide is shifting…His book synthesizes his own and others’ research that brings in data from non-WEIRD languages and broadens our understanding of how words affect cognition, including how we process the concepts of time, space, color, and kinship. -- Lucy Swedberg * Harvard Business Review * Offers readers a tantalizing glimpse into the wide variety of human speech patterns evident in the world today. * Library Journal * An enlightening examination of human communication based on the findings of linguist fieldworkers—himself included—as well as researchers in areas such as cognitive psychology, data science, and respiratory medicine. * Kirkus Reviews * Everett relates complex linguistic discussions in accessible terms, and each page is full of thought-provoking insights. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) * Blending an ethnographer’s richness with an experimentalist’s clarity, Everett adroitly explains how what we’ve learned from data-driven studies of a myriad of tongues–from Amazonia and Africa to Australia and Austronesia–has dramatically shifted our understanding of the origins and nature of our species’ most salient ability: language. Far from being an isolated projection of innate psychology, languages evolve like other aspects of culture, adapting to our ecological contexts, social norms, acoustic environments, and cognitive inclinations. Languages also shape how speakers think, feel, and even perceive. With balance and breadth, this book offers an easy entry into a fascinating, though often ferocious, interdisciplinary field. -- Joe Henrich, author of <i>The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous</i> A marvelous tour of all that is amazing, perplexing, satisfying, and mysterious about languages and the humans who speak them. Everett combines up-to-date analyses with vivid descriptions of the diverse tools that humans use when they speak. His book drills down into deep mysteries but does so with a light hand, leading readers from one big question to the next. An essential read for anyone who wants to understand what we now know about language and how profoundly that understanding has recently evolved. -- Christine Kenneally, author of <i>The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures</i> Do different languages create different experiences of the world? Everett offers up a wealth of nuanced insights on the state of the science to replace both the old exoticism and the lazy skepticism. This is an overdue and fascinating book. -- Gaston Dorren, author of <i>Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages</i> A gift for language is a large part of what makes us human, but as Everett shows, that gift manifests itself in an astonishing spectrum of ways. As previous certainties about the structure of language erode and dissolve under pressure from new discoveries, researchers in many fields are finally grasping the importance of linguistic diversity. This is a careful yet deeply provocative work. -- Mark Abley, author of <i>Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages</i> This book resoundingly demonstrates just how different languages can be and what those divergences reveal about us as a species. Based on both cutting-edge research and the author’s own experiences in the Amazon, where he grew up and conducted fieldwork, it will appeal to anyone who is interested in the science of language. -- Nick Evans, author of <i>Words of Wonder: Endangered Languages and What They Tell Us</i>