Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle

Product Information

They can refer to "some" or "more", but lack a counting system, or even a way to specify a single object. The villagers insisted that they had no desire to live like Americans, and they begged him to stop talking about Jesus. Whereas “we define success in industrialized cultures at least partially as the ongoing improvement in our technology … the Pirahas show no such improvement, nor a desire for it. This book is about the lessons I have learned over three decades of studying and living with the Pirahãs, a time in which I have tried my best to comprehend how they see, understand, and talk about the world and to transmit these lessons to my scientific colleagues.

In the book Everett also explains that the Piraha speak on several different language channels, which is pretty different than English.

The linguistic observations interested me as did the stories about the family trying to integrate and live in a completely new culture.

Over the more than two decades since that summer morning, I have tried to come to grips with the significance of how two cultures, my European-based culture and the Pirahãs’ culture, could see reality so differently. Everett’s heroic efforts were vexed by the fact that no other language on Earth bore the slightest resemblance to Pirahã. In his book as well as in an interview Daniel Everett claimed that the Pirahas language influenced their culture. Was it an autobiography, linguistic anthropology, critique of Chomsky's theories, or an anti-missionary apologetic?

Everett, then a Christian missionary, arrived among the Pirahã in 1977—with his wife and three young children—intending to convert them.

It is forbidden to copy anything for publication elsewhere without written permission from the copyright holder. I found them fascinating though not straightforward to grasp, but if you simply want an enjoyable read about a most unusual life and meet a most unusual culture, there is still much to enjoy in Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes. On top of everything else Everett describes them as having a “very conservative” culture, in the sense of being unwilling to consider innovation.The Pirahas have deep feelings, but to survive, they know life is hard and they strive to resolve our own problems. One example: Everett was really upset with all the people of Brazil for seemingly not giving a damn about the fact his wife was very sick with malaria, and maybe dying even. Aggression is observed from time to time, from mild to severe (Keren witnessed a gang rape of a young unmarried girl by most of the village men). In general it really surprised me that they lacked so much language and linguistic forms that we have. He also says that they can count on their fingers, for example, but that they do not have words for the numbers.

No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Many of the outsiders (there haven’t been that many, though…) who have visited the Piraha have concluded that they are the happiest people on Earth. The author seems to be willing to protect the Pirahã people from any kind of criticism - which is OK, I think, but quite artificial. It's amazing to read this man's 30 year journey into this completely new, untranslatable universe, and the final remark that the language appears to be an evidence against Chomsky's (precarious) "hypothesis". Though this was a culturally shocking experience, I can at least understand their culture and respect that their “immediacy of experience” does not mean that they are cruel when it comes to death, but rather they think and talk in the present so it only made sense to them not to let the baby suffer any further. I believe he’s coming to the UK in November, so you could always attend one of his events and ask him yourself then.