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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Myriad of Tongues: How Languages Reveal Differences in How We Think

A Myriad of Tongues: How Languages Reveal Differences in How We Think

Everett, Caleb

Paperback

LinguisticsAnthropologyGeneral Psychology

Publisher Price: $22.95

PREORDER - Expected ship date April 7, 2026

ISBN10: 0674303466
ISBN13: 9780674303461
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: Apr 7 2026
Pages: 288
Language: English

An award-winning look at the relationship between the language we speak and our perception of such fundamentals of experience as time, space, color, and smells.

We tend to assume that all languages categorize ideas and objects similarly, reflecting our common human experience. But in fact many basic concepts are not universal. Speakers of different languages literally see and think about the world differently.

Caleb Everett takes readers around the globe, explaining what linguistic diversity shows us about human culture. For instance, though we may think that everybody refers to time in spatial terms--in English, it passes us by--speakers of the Amazonian language Tupi Kawahib never do. In fact, Tupi Kawahib has no word for time at all. And while it has long been understood that languages categorize colors that speakers regularly encounter, evidence also suggests that the color words at our disposal affect how we actually perceive colors. Similarly, the terms available to us affect the range of smells we can identify.

Why do some cultures talk anthropocentrically about things being to one's left or right, while others use geocentric words like east and west? What is the connection between what we eat and the sounds we make? A Myriad of Tongues answers these and other questions, yielding profound insights into fundamentals of human communication and experience.

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