Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett

Jul 26, 2012 Kinga rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: latin-america, non-fiction, words-words-words, travel

You know know that situation when you meet somebody and they really annoy you but later on, much to your surprise, you end being very good friends with them? That's what happened with me and Mr Everett. My initial reaction to him and what I was reading was: Oh geez, what an American! And I apologise to all my American friends, I love you all, but I did mean that pejoratively. One example: Everett was really upset with all the people of Brazil for seemingly not giving a damn about the fact his wi...more You know know that situation when you meet somebody and they really annoy you but later on, much to your surprise, you end being very good friends with them? That's what happened with me and Mr Everett. My initial reaction to him and what I was reading was: Oh geez, what an American! And I apologise to all my American friends, I love you all, but I did mean that pejoratively. 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. It took him YEARS to realise that the reason behind was that poor Brazilian people keep dying of all sorts of diseases and the world doesn't stop turning, so Brazilian people didn't understand why it should stop turning because of an American being sick. It really did take him YEARS to realise that. Let me just say in my finest Americanese - DOH!

This book was all over the place. It went like this: I went to Amazanionan Jungle to talk about God to the Indians. My wife got malaria. The Pirahas don't have numerals. My kids grew up in the jungle and the Pirahas talk about sex a lot. They also don't have recurssion in their language, so clearly Chomsky was wrong. Also, there is no God (sorry if this last bit was a spoiler to some).
But I forgive Everett everything because anyone who says Chomsky is wrong and manages to undermine his whole silly theory is a friend of mine.

The best chapter of the book is when Everett after 20 or 30 years realizes that the Pirahas will never be converted (did I mention he went there as a missonary?) and consequently comes to the conclusion that the Bible is a load of rubbish. Here are a few quotes because to get to that chapter you have to read first a few about recurssion in the language, Chomsky's Universal Grammar theory and general musings about linguistics. I am not sure you have it in you to do that, so here are the best bits. You can thank me later.

"On our furlough, I thought again of the challenge of the missionary: to convince a happy, satisfied people that they are lost and need Jesus as their personal saviour. My evangelism professor at Biola University, Dr. Curtis Mitchell used to say. 'You've gotta get 'em lost before you can get 'em saved.' If people don't perceive a serious lack of some sort in their lives, they are less likely to embrace new beliefs, especially about God and salvation"

So that's how it's done! I see!

"'The women are afraid of Jesus. We do not want him.'
'Why not?' I asked, wondering what triggered this declaration.
'Because last night he came to our village and tried to have sex with our women. He chased them around the village, trying to stick his large penis into them.'
Kaaxaooi proceeded to show me with his two hands held far apart how long Jesus's penis was - a good three feet."

"'The Pirahas know that you left your family and your own land to come here and live with us. We know that you do this to tell us about Jesus. You want us to live like Americans. But the Pirahas do not want to live like Americans. We like to drink. We like more than one woman. We don't want Jesus. But we like you. You can stay with us. But we don't want to hear any more about Jesus. OK?'"

A winner.(less)

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Oct 08, 2012 David DeMar rated it 4 of 5 stars

The story of a gifted linguist who goes to live with the Pirahã people in South America as a Christian missionary.

To me the most fascinating parts of the book are about the Pirahã themselves. Their culture and understanding of the world is so completely alien and incomprehensible to the modern Westerner. Their language is especially fascinating, as it lacks the ability to express concepts like numbers and colors. The Pirahã also seem to live in the absolute present, and things which they cannot...more

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Sep 11, 2009 Shomeret rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: anthropology, my-reviews, worldcat-reviews

Everett's limitations with regard to religion made him unable to understand that the Piraha really did have a religion. They actually spoke to him about their interactions with spirits. The Piraha accept only direct experience as valid. This is why the Bible has no meaning to them, but if Everett had said "I saw Jesus today and this is what he told me," they would have accepted that as legitimate testimony. Direct interaction with the divine is found in all religious traditions. The Piraha appro...more

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Aug 24, 2012 David Campton rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, factual

I gave this book a relatively poor rating, not because I am a Christian minister and this book concludes (SPOILER ALERT) with the unsurprising revelation that through his work with the Piraha he had abandoned his Christian faith, but because it was a literary dog's dinner. Wasn't entirely sure what the author was trying to do in this book. Was it an autobiography, linguistic anthropology, critique of Chomsky's theories, or an anti-missionary apologetic? The lack of a clear structure and aim to t...more I gave this book a relatively poor rating, not because I am a Christian minister and this book concludes (SPOILER ALERT) with the unsurprising revelation that through his work with the Piraha he had abandoned his Christian faith, but because it was a literary dog's dinner. Wasn't entirely sure what the author was trying to do in this book. Was it an autobiography, linguistic anthropology, critique of Chomsky's theories, or an anti-missionary apologetic? The lack of a clear structure and aim to the book certainly didn't endear the author to me, and, while I come from a "faith-perspective" myself, I found his approach to the Piraha tribe he was working with, and his own inability to reflect on his own thinking and behaviour, deeply frustrating long before he revealed his loss of faith. There was a curious contradiction between his latter description of the Piraha as not needing what he had originally gone to share with them ie. the Bible in their own language and the gospel it speaks of, whilst earlier he had described a people with little fellow-feeling, who(possibly through an enhanced sense of mortality) had an almost callous disregard for the lives of others, be that Dr. Everett's malaria-stricken wife, a member of the tribe giving birth alone on the riverbank, or a woman effectively gang-raped by the males of the tribe. This is, by no means, a tribe of bucolic innocents. I was also struck by the fact that while he identified ties between their language, culture and (lack of) theology (although I would contend that he missed the sense of an existential/experiential spirituality - and because of a lack of a classic Jamesian experiential faith on his own part, he had no point of contact or awareness to draw on), he seemed unable to identify the strong cultural conditioning of his own faith... the Piraha were not interested in his American Jesus, and why should they be? Especially when his actions didn't match his profession - early on in the book, there was he, who professed belief in life after death, frantically trying to save his ill family (and making some dreadful decisions in seeking to do so) while the Piraha, who believed in death as a part of life with nothing afterwards, simply watching on dispassionately. What was particularly distasteful for me as a Christian, was the idea inculcated in Everett and others at college, that you have to get people lost before they can understand their need to be saved... Whilst I understand the sentiment, frankly, I would rather that others sent out with that as their missionary mindset, should rethink not only what, but why they are doing what they are doing. Obviously I would prefer they didn't come to the same conclusion as Dr. Everett... But we need people, in the Amazon and in the post-Christian west, to free the Bible and Gospel from its cultural and linguistic shackles...(less)

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Feb 02, 2010 Kim rated it 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book but I never really trusted its author, a linguist with an editor who used the phrase "a myriad of" in the first chapter. Everett's descriptions of the Pirahas are oddly incongruent. For example, he characterized them as "peaceful" right before mentioning the rape of a young woman by "most" of the men in the village. While most anthropologists would consider this a significant event, Everett refers to it in parentheses. Everett says the Pirahas are lacking in ritual and...more

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Dec 26, 2012 Alex Railean rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autobiography, brain, education, god, history, intelligence, learning, philosophy, psychology, relationships, religion, society, science, linguistics

I read this book in one breath, it is a very interesting account of one's attempt to understand a completely different culture and the observations they made while doing so.

The story covers a broad range of subjects: languages, philosophy of science, personal relationships, sex, trust, violence, religion, happiness, ... these are just a few.

I loved it!

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Jun 11, 2013 MD rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

Although it was interesting hearing about the lives and the language of the Piranhà, the author's interpretations sometimes simply didn't ring true, or it seemed that important information was missing. One of the things I wondered about were his children. If they were living and playing with Piranha children, weren't they learning the language too? It seems that they would have learned the language even better than the author did because they would have been learning it the same way a native spe...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Jason Yang rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I met Daniel Everett at a AAAS outreach event in February. He was introducing a Smithsonian documentary on his (personal and academic) story [Grammar of Happiness - check it out!]. I came across this book when I was later looking into his story online.

Many aspects of Dan's story struck me as compelling - his steadfastness in embarking on his Christian mission, his cultural experiences in adapting to Piraha culture, his internal struggles in challenging his own norms, his academic warfare and the...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Andrewcharles420 rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Daniel Everett, PhD, went with his family to live with a native Amazonian tribe (Pirahas) and learn their language. He found many aspects of the language and culture to be unique in anthropology and challenged conventional theories on grammar and thought. His started out working as an evangelical missionary, but eventually became more and more academic and less Christian.

The language research in this book is really interesting--especially demonstrating how culture and beliefs can affect thought...more Daniel Everett, PhD, went with his family to live with a native Amazonian tribe (Pirahas) and learn their language. He found many aspects of the language and culture to be unique in anthropology and challenged conventional theories on grammar and thought. His started out working as an evangelical missionary, but eventually became more and more academic and less Christian.

The language research in this book is really interesting--especially demonstrating how culture and beliefs can affect thought and grammar! This was mostly the second part of the three part book, and it was easily my favorite section, and the part the held my interest most--I would definitely recommend this section! The Pirahas appear to frame their thinking by the immediacy of experience--i.e. it happens to you, happened to you, or happened to someone you know--otherwise it cannot affect you and doesn't matter. This breaks down many seemingly innate forms of abstraction--no numbers, no 'right' and 'left', no time before memory or ancestral/creation stories. In terms of linguistics, Sapir-Whorf>Chomsky, but still incomplete w.r.t. culture affecting language. An utterly fascinating way to perceive the world!

This compelling research tale was wrapped in the memoir-esque story of the author's start and end as a missionary, and the travels and travails he and his family went through in order to perform these studies. These parts of the book I did not as much care for. They gave some interesting background of the region and the relationships of the Pirahas to the surrounding societies, but were filled with the author's (IMO) negative outlook, cultural biases, and frankly un-Christian attitude (which makes his leaving the religion easy to reconcile). I worry that when missionaries envision themselves as doing the work of God, they arrogate to themselves the responsibility to act as the hand of God, when really their doctrine should tell them to be more humble and accepting. Stories of hypocritical do-gooders are hard to swallow. Nonetheless, I don't think this at all affected his research (and indeed it appears his research much more affected his religiosity!), and his work and studies appear to be excellent!(less)

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Nov 13, 2012 Mom rated it 4 of 5 stars

What a fascinating book! Author Daniel Everett went as a Christian missionary to live amongst the Piraha Indians in the Amazonian jungle. He describes their unique culture, discusses in great detail their language, and relates his experiences with the Piraha people.

The cultural sections were amazing although I was at times skeptical of his observations because they are so outside normal expectations. I will be watching the internet for verification by other ethnologists. If what he relates is ac...more

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May 14, 2012 DC rated it 4 of 5 stars

The popular science aspects of this book are much more successful than the more memoir-like pieces. While the science parts are well reasoned and interesting,the memoir parts are more like a string of unconnected anecdotes. They are really interesting and pretty well written anecdotes, mind you, but they seem to lack a common theme that only becomes partially clear in the penultimate chapter. Even this bit of revelation feels very superficial compared to the profound effects on the author's life...more

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Feb 14, 2012 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

A combination of anthropological investigation, linguistic study, and personal memoir. The book is riveting, impossible to put down, because of Everett's personal involvement with the people he studies. In the beginning he finds their language impenetrable and cannot discern that they have a culture by which they live. Eventually, he cracks the language and finds it conforms to none spoken anywhere in the world. In doing so, he thinks he's refuted none other than Noam Chomsky in his theory of li...more

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Dec 11, 2011 Jan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read an interview with the author (in all honesty, one of the best interviews out there) on the Survival International homepage and I was therefore encouraged to go ahead and purchase the book.

Overall, the book strengthened my belief that there is an inherent arrogance in the attitude of missionaries whose zeal is simply that of achieving religious coercion.
Christian religion, and other world religions, are not genuinely universal and Everett's failed attempt at converting the Pirahas is gen...more

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Jul 20, 2011 Rita marked it as to-read

Kinga gave 4 stars to: Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel L. Everett
bookshelves: latin-america, non-fiction, travel, words-words-words
status: Read in June, 2010

You know know that situation when you meet somebody and they really annoy you but later on, much to your surprise, you end being very good friends with them? That's what happened with me and Mr Everett. My initial reaction to him and what I was reading was: Oh geez, what an American! And I apologise to all my American friends, I lo...more Kinga gave 4 stars to: Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel L. Everett
bookshelves: latin-america, non-fiction, travel, words-words-words
status: Read in June, 2010

You know know that situation when you meet somebody and they really annoy you but later on, much to your surprise, you end being very good friends with them? That's what happened with me and Mr Everett. My initial reaction to him and what I was reading was: Oh geez, what an American! And I apologise to all my American friends, I love you all, but I did mean that pejoratively. 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. It took him YEARS to realise that the reason behind was that poor Brazilian people keep dying of all sorts of diseases and the world doesn't stop turning, so Brazilian people didn't understand why it should stop turning because of an American being sick. It really did take him YEARS to realise that. Let me just say in my finest Americanese - DOH!

This book was all over the place. It went like this: I went to Amazanionan Jungle to talk about God to the Indians. My wife got malaria. The Pirahas don't have numerals. My kids grew up in the jungle and the Pirahas talk about sex a lot. They also don't have recurssion in their language, so clearly Chomsky was wrong. Also, there is no God (sorry if this last bit was a spoiler to some).
But I forgive Everett everything because anyone who says Chomsky is wrong and manages to undermine his whole silly theory is a friend of mine.

The best chapter of the book is when Everett after 20 or 30 years realizes that the Pirahas will never be converted (did I mention he went there as a missonary?) and consequently comes to the conclusion that the Bible is a load of rubbish. Here are a few quotes because to get to that chapter you have to read first a few about recurssion in the language, Chomsky's Universal Grammar theory and general musings about linguistics. I am not sure you have it in you to do that, so here are the best bits. You can thank me later.

"On our furlough, I thought again of the challenge of the missionary: to convince a happy, satisfied people that they are lost and need Jesus as their personal saviour. My evangelism professor at Biola University, Dr. Curtis Mitchell used to say. 'You've gotta get 'em lost before you can get 'em saved.' If people don't perceive a serious lack of some sort in their lives, they are less likely to embrace new beliefs, especially about God and salvation"

So that's how it's done! I see!

"'The woman are afraid of Jesus. We do not want him.'
'Why not?' I asked, wondering what triggered this declaration.
'Because last night he came to our village and tried to have sex with our women. He chased them around the village, trying to stick his large penis into them.'
Kaaxaooi proceeded to show me with his two hands held far apart how long Jesus's penis was - a good three feet."

"'The Pirahas know that you left your family and your own land to come here and live with us. We know that you do this to tell us about Jesus. You want us to live like Americans. But the Pirahas do not want to live like Americans. We like to drink. We like more than one woman. We don't want Jesus. But we like you. You can stay with us. But we don't want to hear any more about Jesus. OK?'"
(less)

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Jan 17, 2011 Yune rated it 3 of 5 stars

Everett lives among the Pirahã, an Amazonian people, in order to study their language. Interesting experiences and thoughts about the intertwined nature of language and culture, but couched in workmanship-like writing.

Still, I appreciated how he could relate the story of the tribesfolk saying, "Don't forget to bring back this list of goods!" when he's desperately trying to get his wife and daughter to a hospital from this remote region before they die of malaria, and show a (present-day) underst...more

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Aug 31, 2010 Clarissa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book seems like three separate books rolled into one. I'm not sure that they all belonged in one volume. And parts of all three are mixed together with no discernible method of ordering them.

The first of the three books is a collection of stories from the author's experiences living with the Pirahas, an Amazonian tribe still largely untouched by the modern world. Most of these stories were good; some were boring. If he had stopped here, I would have given him 4 or 5 stars. This was the book...more

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May 13, 2010 Frank Stein rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Another one of the best books I've read all year.

At first I was enjoying the book as a fairly typical, though well-written, anthropology slash adventure story, concerning an idealistic young missionary who goes off into the Amazon to convert an almost untouched tribe of hunter-gatherers. Everett gives a wonderful sense of life among the tribe, and of those great little moments which show exactly how similar and how different we all are: from the time the men killed the anaconda for the sole purp...more
Another one of the best books I've read all year.

At first I was enjoying the book as a fairly typical, though well-written, anthropology slash adventure story, concerning an idealistic young missionary who goes off into the Amazon to convert an almost untouched tribe of hunter-gatherers. Everett gives a wonderful sense of life among the tribe, and of those great little moments which show exactly how similar and how different we all are: from the time the men killed the anaconda for the sole purpose of leaving it in the river where the women bathed and scaring them, to the time the tribe kills a baby Everett's family was trying to save because its mother had died and it "wanted to die" too. It's a life both uncannily familiar and incomprehensibly different from anything we've experienced.

But Everett soon learns that there is something very distinct about this tribe, even next to the kaleidoscopic variety of other Amazonian tribes. He learns that the tribe has no clear plurals in their language or even any words for numbers (not even the one, two, three). When the tribe eagerly asks him to teach them to count because they are tired of getting screwed by the caboclo river traders, they attempt vainly for 8 months and then claim such a feat is impossible and give up.

This is where the real story begins. Everett came to the tribe as a disciple both of Christ and Noam Chomsky's Universal Grammar, but gradually he realized that this tribe, the Pirahas, didn't have numerous attributes that Chomsky said should be in every grammar, such as conjunctions and recursions. When discussing how this tribe may upend our entire theory of language, it seems like every paragraph he writes sets off new fireworks. He talks about how the Piraha's concern for the immediacy of experience prevents them from generalizing about even such simple things as color, number, or time. But, he knows, if such cultural concerns can influence grammar and language then the whole linguistic system of a-cultural grammar (elaborated by people like Pinker in the Language Instinct and McWhorter in The Tower of Babel) has to be overthrown. A language may tell us much more about a culture than we ever admitted possible. For instance, another language researcher found that tribes with fatalistic heros in their myths tended to use passive voice, while those with more active heros used active voice. Voice wasn't just a way for organizing information in a sentence, a la Chomsky, it was an everyday expression of belief. This is both the more common sense and perhaps more exciting view. There's so much more we can learn from languages that we ever thought possible before.

Everett takes the implications of this beyond simple linguistics to debates over Cartesian rationalism, William James' pragmatism, and Christianity (he becomes an agnostic by the end of his stay). It's a book that masterfully shows how abstract debates about seemingly esoteric subjects have real consequences for our entire conception of ourselves as human beings.(less)

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Apr 18, 2010 Randall rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was an interesting non-fiction book about a missionary / professional linguist who spent three decades in the Amazon jungle living with a local tribe. His original mission was to learn their language so that he could convert them to Christianity. The language itself turned out to be completely unlike any other language that had previously been documented, and the longer the missionary spent in the midst of the tribe, the less sure he became of his own convictions. The book gave a fascinatin...more

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Feb 10, 2010 David Rim rated it 3 of 5 stars

Ok, I'll say it. It creeps me out when over-educated/churched white people go to live in jungles with non-white/non-educated/underprivileged people to "learn" their way and then promote their way of life as some kind of idyllic vision.

The writing is not great, so you'll have to enjoy this one on its non-fiction contributions. The general idea, as Everett puts it, is that standard view of linguistics (grammar is divorced somewhat from semantics and is universal in nature) cannot account for the o...more

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Apr 25, 2009 Kayleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Oh my goodness. I recommend this one pretty highly. The author was a Christian missionary who spent nearly 30 years living and working with the Piraha people of the Amazon. His goal was to translate the Bible into Piraha, so he got into grad school and initially went to the Pirahas to work on his master's thesis. Over the next 30 years, he returned frequently to study their language and to translate between the Pirahas and the Brazilian government when they finally established a reservation for...more Oh my goodness. I recommend this one pretty highly. The author was a Christian missionary who spent nearly 30 years living and working with the Piraha people of the Amazon. His goal was to translate the Bible into Piraha, so he got into grad school and initially went to the Pirahas to work on his master's thesis. Over the next 30 years, he returned frequently to study their language and to translate between the Pirahas and the Brazilian government when they finally established a reservation for the Piraha people.

The book focuses mainly on the Piraha language and culture, which is unique in several ways, including:

- No words for colours or numbers

- Only eleven phonemes (Tieing it with two other languages for "world's smallest set of sounds in a language")

- No words for "hello", "goodbye", "thank you", "please", etc. Instead of "goodnight", they often say "Don't sleep. There are snakes."

- No recursive! Each sentence contains only one idea. A paraphrased example from the book (I don't have the book handy, or else I'd give an exact quote) went something like "Give me those matches. Dan gave me matches yesterday. They are the same." Apparently it would be grammatically incorrect in Piraha to combine those ideas into one sentence, such as "Give me the matches that Dan gave me yesterday."

- The Piraha have no belief in God, no oral history, no creation myth.

The book was very interesting, often sad, and sometimes shocking. There's stories in there about encounters with anacondas, bouts of malaria, and deadly encounters with neighbouring Amazonians. There's also a part that had Daphne and I roaring with laughter, where "Jesus" visits the tribe and tries to chase all of their women with his massively large penis (Gee, think one of the Piraha men was playing a practical joke?)

If you don't have any background in linguistics or anthropology, you'll still get a lot from this book as long as you find the subjects interesting. The author discusses a lot of theory but explains all of the concepts in plain English and gives examples with anecdotes of his time with the Piraha people, so I found it to be very accessible as a non-linguist.

Anyhoo. Read it. Read it now.(less)

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Nov 07, 2009 Elizabeth Newell rated it 4 of 5 stars

So far this is a very interesting book about a group of people I'd never heard of before with a unique language. The perspective of the missionary who went to live among them adds a nice, personal touch, though his constant contradictions of himself is irritating. For instance:

-He says they have no word for 'sorry', and then a few pages later translates an apology using that word.
-He says that violence is uncommon and never tolerated, right after describing a gang rape in which 'all the men of t...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Sheri rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

My husband picked this one up and spent quite a bit of time telling me about the Pirahas and so I felt somewhat required to read it. Overall it is a very interesting book with lots of great stories about jungle life, funny anecdotes and life lessons. As a “pop” linguistic book, it is slightly educational and very readable (and so can appeal to the masses). I am not a linguist and realize that some of my comments below may be misguided, misdirected, or just completely off the mark.

However, I do...more My husband picked this one up and spent quite a bit of time telling me about the Pirahas and so I felt somewhat required to read it. Overall it is a very interesting book with lots of great stories about jungle life, funny anecdotes and life lessons. As a “pop” linguistic book, it is slightly educational and very readable (and so can appeal to the masses). I am not a linguist and realize that some of my comments below may be misguided, misdirected, or just completely off the mark.

However, I do have an MS in sociology and I think that this book could have benefited from some sociological input. First off, I am not very familiar with Chomsky’s work (I have read Pinker’s Language Instinct), but I grasp the general idea of genetic (or biological) predisposition. I sort of classified Everett’s arguments here for cultural effects on language to be just as (if not more) important than genetics to be quite similar to the sociologist’s argument with the evolutionary psychologists in the whole nature vs. nurture debate. I always took the middle ground in that debate: certainly your genetics can influence your personality (if in no other way than they determine what you look like which will determine how you are treated), but your environment will also influence your personality. Throughout this book Everett takes his stance against Chomsky (political-academic struggles aside) and I get that he is taking an opposing viewpoint to the mainstream status quo. HOWEVER, can’t we pick a middle ground? Certainly it is revolutionary to say that grammar is not innate, but do we have to then jump camp and determine that it is fully culturally created? In chapter 14, Everett presents a table with six possible options for the relationship between cognition, grammar, and culture. He posits each one as a potential cause of the other, without ever proposing that the relationship might not be uni-directional. His point is to discredit the five to which he does not subscribe, but I can’t simply jump on board with his culture causes both cognition and grammar argument. Simple is good and when proposing a theory if one can say with absolute confidence that A causes B we have reason to rejoice. Unfortunately, almost never in social science do we have such simple relationships (and Everett himself points this out at times in the book, but when discussing the relationship between culture and language he seems to forget this). I was most exasperated with this discussion when Everett explained Urban’s theory. I have not read Urban’s stuff so this complaint may simply be a result of my own ignorance, but I was struck by the incompleteness of the idea that the language used in passive oral histories leads to heroes who are perceived as being more passive. I think we could argue the other way; in a culture of passive heroes, the language used to describe them would necessarily be passive. Again, even if it is not unidirectional, we can imagine a feedback loop in which cultures with some passive heroes may use such language in stories which then, in turn, may create more (and different) passive heroes.

As an aside here, one of Everett’s main arguments against Chomsky seems to be Chomsky’s insistence that every language has recursion. I think I understand recursion, but I am not sure how Everett’s example “Hey Paita, bring back some nails. Dan bought those very nails. They are the same.” cannot be understood as a form of recursion. Yes, the clauses are not nested, but if we simply put the third sentence before the second: “Bring back some nails, they are the same, Dan bought the nails” wouldn’t that fit? And doesn’t he give evidence that recursion can occur at the end (I do get why simple repetition is not recursion…yes, my dog barks furiously as well, although more at the mail carrier than people walking past) of a sentence as well as in the middle? I guess my point is why can’t Chomsky’s theory be slightly modified such that rather than recursion, the critical requirement is that all languages convey complex thoughts in linked phrases? I know that Everett makes fun of this idea when he describes the way that Chomskyites have redefined recursion: “if I can put sentences together to form a story, that is recursion.”, but isn’t there a middle ground? I would argue that the request to bring nails and the description of which ones is not a STORY, but an elaborate thought. This thought can be conveyed in one complex English sentence, but requires three Piraha sentences. What am I missing here conceptually? Why can’t the new theoretical requirement be something about conveying complex thoughts in few words regardless of whether those are in one sentence?

Certainly, I agree with a lot of Everett’s discussion on the importance of culture. I wish he had read (or at least cited) some of the social psychological work on perception; his discussion of his own inability to spot a caiman in the dark and the Pirahas’ fear of traffic are great examples of the way that culture informs our perception. However, these are not new topics. Social psychology is full of “perception is reality” and theories on how our understanding and expectations cloud our ability to grasp the objective world.

One final topic that I thought was lacking in this discussion is the work that has been done in ethnomethodology (literally “member’s methods”). Ethnomethodology is the study of the way in which group members have short hand or other ways to understand each other’s meanings and efforts without complete elucidation of their intent. Everett gives two examples that I would consider ethnomethodological: when he talks about how the a Piraha father would tell his son to shoot a fish without needing to first say “sit in a canoe for several hours quietly and then account for light refraction when you release the arrow” and when he says that Westerner’s say turn left here without specifying “first slow the car at the red light and get in the left turn lane.” We rely on this short hand because otherwise life would be completely inefficient. Studying a culture is in essence the study of ethnomethodology; in order to understand a society (especially a small fairly homogeneous society like the Pirahas) it is necessary to understand their methods. I totally agree with Everett’s analysis here, but was struck by his apparent ignorance of ethnomethodology.

Everett’s main theory about the Piraha’s language and culture is defined by the immediacy of experience (IEP). I loved that he described the Pirahas as some of the happiest and most satisfied people, frequently I have tried to achieve a more “in the moment” sense of being as I do believe this is one of the keys to happiness. It is certainly unique that the Pirahas as a society appear to have no real interest in events outside the bounds of their existence.

Everett sites IEP theory to explain why there are no creation myths or other oral history in the Piraha culture and language. However, he also describes an evening of theater in which several well known spirits appear. I get the idea that IEP requires hands on or one person removed experience for plausibility. I also can respect the idea that these people interpret dreams as reality and can create trance-like (I was thinking mediums from the Victorian era) states in which they become the spirits for the benefit of the community. But how is this not a form of oral history? Everett comments that one of the characters that appears in this semi-theatrical evening (complete with costume changes and falsetto voices) is a favorite. Clearly, the Pirahas know what to expect. The spirit is not new in any way, he is following some sort of (even if it is improvisational in part) script. From whence does this character come? How can Everett claim that this is not part of an oral tradition?

Related to this is another question that came to mind while I was reading. I understand that Pirahas don’t put much credence in hearsay. Certainly, I can tell them what I saw or maybe what my husband told me that he saw, but it will lose poignancy if I try to tell them what my sister-in-law told my husband that she saw. However (and especially in relation to these spirit/theater events), why isn’t there inter-generational discourse? For example, if my great-great-grandparent told all 3 of his kids (one of which would be my great-grandmother) something and then my great-grandmother told my grandmother (and her siblings) and my grandmother told my father (and his siblings), by the time the story got to me it would be several generations removed, but would be corroborated by not just my father, but my aunts and uncles and my grandfather and great-aunts and uncles. The original source of information (great-great-grandparent) is no longer available and verification is impossible, but the evidence could still be supported. I know that Everett did not find any evidence of an oral history such as this (with the possible exception noted above about the spirit theater), but what about other knowledge? Is there really nothing noted like “the tree by which many jaguars have been killed” or "a spot that many fish are caught"? I find it astounding that there wasn’t any specific knowledge (I’m not talking about skills like fishing and gathering, which cannot be transmitted solely through words) passed through the generations. Wow.

I wasn’t quite sure I agreed with his repeated categorization of the Pirahas as rejecting all foreign knowledge. He first mentions this with the story of the canoe-maker who he paid to come and instruct the Pirahas on how to build a canoe. After successfully building a canoe, the Pirahas refused to build one again. Later, Everett describes his attempt to teach the Pirahas number sense and their enthusiasm for, but inability to grasp, a system for counting. He also talks about how they refuse to fish with a fishing pole. He describes them as having a strong sense of identity and a rejection of anything that has not been historically part of their culture. I question if this is accurate because he also describes them as learning to plant and reap Manioc, happy to use a motor (if it fits easily into their canoe), embracing the radios and tape recorders that he demonstrates, and eager for Western medicine and cachaca. Based on Everett’s representations, I would argue that the Pirahas are comfortable accepting foreign (new) knowledge if it is easy to use and provides a noticeable (and rather immediate) benefit to their lives. These are a people who do not spend much time thinking or worrying beyond the immediate moment; they accept outsider’s technology when it is ephemeral, but they are incapable of understanding learning now for some delayed gratification. Everett does briefly mention this idea: “They have rejected in the past any device that would require change in their knowledge or their practices. If such devices cannot simply be appended to Pirahas’ traditional ways of doing things, they are rejected.” but this comment is only made in passing, while at numerous points throughout he repeats the idea that the Pirahas reject outsiders’ influence.

I also wasn’t sure that the evidence provided in the book supported his repeated comments on the Pirahas’ requirement for self reliance. Certainly, they have a much more Darwinian approach and he gives numerous examples of when they as a community allow individuals to die without assistance (the woman on the beach giving birth, the baby who is given alcohol by his father, and the rejection of medical help for individuals who are not likely to recover completely and be contributing members). However, he gives just as many examples of incidents where the community helps one another and supports each other (the father of one family who feeds another child, the hunt for an older man in the jungle, the old man who is too crippled to hunt, but who is given food by other villagers). He also cites ostracization as the highest form of punishment. I don’t think his explanation of self reliance as a necessity in the community adequately explains why they would assist one another in some circumstances and not others. How is a baby who will grow up and become a contributor to the community less valuable than a crippled old man? Why would they help one for the better of the village, but not the other? Further, he argues that the language has evolved only a few kinship terms because of the cultural value placed on the community at large. He says that “Piraha children roam about the village and are considered to be related to and partially the responsibility of everyone in the village.” Well then, how do we reconcile this with the fact that NO ONE assisted a woman giving birth who was directly asking for help? Clearly, in a matter of 2-24 hours she would have finished with the birthing and would eventually be able to participate in society again. I am not trying to place a value judgement here, I’m just not sure that a fine-knit community ("one that sleeps together stays together") is compatible with the idea that everyone is completely responsible for their own health. I think there is more here that is not really adequately explained by Everett’s theory.

Again, this is a great book and represents an amazing amount of time and energy spent in a place that I would not be comfortable spending more than 24 hours. I am duly impressed with Everett’s linguistic abilities (learning to speak and creating a writing system for Piraha's language). His writing was approachable and the stories were entertaining; I just wasn’t completely convinced by his arguments (and again this may be in part because of my own ignorance of the details of some of the theories that he mentions). I would love to “hear” commentary from any experts on any of the issues raised above.
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Jan 21, 2012 Diana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book has a lot to recommend it — a first hand account of an Amazonian tribe who've had little contact with the outside world (although they had had some contact with other Christian missionaries and regular contact with river traders). It's worth reading to learn what it's like to live the jungle and the descriptions of insects and snakes certainly dispelled any romantic notions I had about travelling down the Amazon.

I was fascinated by this tribe who live in the "now" and communicate with...more

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Oct 29, 2009 Valerie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Debbie, Kathleen

Recommended to Valerie by: Bookshop Santa CRuz

Shelves: arewethereyet, cypresslibrary, math, science

So far I've seen a great quote, something along the lines of "This book is about the lessons I've learned. Someone else would have learned different lessons."

I bought this book because it was used at Bookshop Santa Cruz, and I was in the mood for travel. In a previous life time I was an anthropology major at UCSC, and I've taken linguistics classes. I didn't realize that this book was about linguistics when I purchased it on a whim, and my heart sank a little when I realized the author was a mis...more

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Mar 25, 2012 Eva rated it 3 of 5 stars

Like other people who have reviewed this book here & on Amazon, I really, really wanted to like it. Looking at culture & language & how they affect one another, mixed with the personal story of a man who started out as a Christian missionary and abandoned his beliefs after living with a Amazonian tribe with no creation myth....wow. It just sounded fantastic. But, unfortunately, it was a let down. It was like a joke that has a really great set-up and falls flat at the punch line. I fe...more Like other people who have reviewed this book here & on Amazon, I really, really wanted to like it. Looking at culture & language & how they affect one another, mixed with the personal story of a man who started out as a Christian missionary and abandoned his beliefs after living with a Amazonian tribe with no creation myth....wow. It just sounded fantastic. But, unfortunately, it was a let down. It was like a joke that has a really great set-up and falls flat at the punch line. I feel like the author needed a strong editor to help flesh out the potentially interesting parts he skims over while cutting out chunks of irrelevancy and redundancy, particularly in the sections where he starts dwelling on academic disputes with Chomsky & other linguists. I love reading about the structure of language, but I don't care to read about people fighting about the structure of language.

There are entire chapters dedicated to discussing stories that go nowhere and fail to illustrate anything, while other events are tossed into the text as casual comments without further explanation. For instance, when discussing sexuality amongst the Piranha, he mentions his wife saw a young unmarried woman gang raped by almost every man in a village. This event is not in any way further contextualized or mentioned again, while another entire chapter is devoted to a teenager murdering a local villager, its context, how anomalous an event it was, what the consequences were (i.e., how the Piranhas police themselves). The author may not have had enough information to flesh out the context and consequences of the gang rape, but to just mention it casually and not even offer a theory of why it happened and why there were/weren't consequences left me as the reader scratching my head in bewilderment.

And the redundancy! How many times do I have to read about the structure of the typical Amazonian river boat with three decks, etc, as if it were the first time it were being mentioned? So much of that could have been chopped out and other parts could have been given more attention. The discussion in the conclusion of how the Piranha affected the author's belief system was some of his finest and most coherent writing, and I was sorry it was treated as almost a peripheral part of the text.

Overall, the book lacked a coherent structure on which the author could hang his experiences or ideas. That said, his work and life with the Piranha is entirely unique, and even lousy and loose editing can't take away from my fascination with the very fact of this tribe's continued existence or his interactions with them, so I have to accept Everett's imperfect text because it's the only window into their way of life that I have.

Sidenote: If you choose to read this, I hope you are as amused as I am at the idea of working so hard to come up with an abstract concept such as the Immediacy of Experience Principle to describe the structure of a language that theoretically holds as its central tenet that abstract objects that cannot be directly experienced cannot be discussed. (less)

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Feb 23, 2013 Marcus rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: curious people

Shelves: non-fiction, anthropology, american, linguistcs

As anyone who has had a conversation with me over the last week can attest to, I think this book, and especially the parts about the culture of the Piraha tribe in the Amazon rainforest is fascinating. The Piraha have frequent contact with neighboring tribes and Brazilians, traders, anthropologists, linguists on a regular basis, yet they are isolationists and somehow seem to avoid being contaminated by any hint of consumerism, ambition or outside culture in any sense. They are content with their...more As anyone who has had a conversation with me over the last week can attest to, I think this book, and especially the parts about the culture of the Piraha tribe in the Amazon rainforest is fascinating. The Piraha have frequent contact with neighboring tribes and Brazilians, traders, anthropologists, linguists on a regular basis, yet they are isolationists and somehow seem to avoid being contaminated by any hint of consumerism, ambition or outside culture in any sense. They are content with their way of life and actively resist any attempt to change it.

The defining value of their culture is that the Piraha rarely, if ever speak of, think about, or make plans beyond a couple days out, and they don't reference the past outside of the living memory of their tribe, usually preferring to speak of much more immediate events. They have embraced the idea of mindfulness and living in the moment without the need for gurus, meditation or any type of conscious effort, other than their active distaste for outside culture.

How's it working out for them? Well they're not exactly growing in size and they basically only survive because the Brazilian government protects their land, but apart from those minor concerns, they are quite happy. So much that, based on the frequency of smiling and laughter among the Piraha, some psychologists believe they are among the happiest people in the world.

The Piraha's focus on the present has other interesting effects on their culture and language. They don't have a counting system, they don't have creation myths since they aren't interested in stories of things that happened more than two eyewitnesses removed from themselves, they maintain only a bare minimum of physical possessions and they seem to eschew the idea of accumulating even items such as tools and food they'll inevitably need to use later.

Another of their unusual traits is that, because of their focus on immediacy, the Piraha do not use recursion in their sentences. To me this observation is compelling, but hardly the most gripping aspect of their culture. For linguists like Everett, this disputed fact could cause the next Kuhn-eque scientific revolution in the field of linguistics. Noam Chomsky and his adherents especially have a lot at stake since Chomsky's entire theory of human language rests on the idea of recursion.

I'm not going to comment on the linguistic debate other than to say that the more controversial and polemical it is, the more entertaining it is. At the time this book was written, it was at the conflict level of reality TV. Everett repeatedly takes stabs at Chomsky and Steven Pinker and their theories and calls them out on their attempts to rebuff him. Everett is calling for a full rewrite of the rules of linguistics and in doing so, threatening a lot of careers and legacies. At the center of this massive wrangle is a small group of people for whom the 'crooked heads,' as they call foreigners, and their petty bickering are the furthest thing possible from their world of enjoying themselves and whatever they happen to be doing at any given time.

The writing is decent, but stylistically it sometimes feels too casual, and the organization could stand a bit of improvement (much like this review!) but Don't Sleep, There are Snakes sure is a fun and profound read.(less)

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Apr 06, 2010 Nancy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, non-fiction

Hmmm. All over the place, this one. The first section is a pretty typical "missionary heads to Amazon with family, you can tell some big changes are up ahead" story. The second section is a fairly technical description of the language of the Pirahã, which I admit to skimming large bits of, because I can only read so much about recursion and human language before I drift. And the third, very short, section describes the fallout on Everett's life of his time with the Pirihã.

I could have done with...more

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Mar 07, 2010 Rebecca rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is one of the most interesting books I've read in recent memory. The author (a former-Christian-missionary-turned-linguist) gives an account of his time spent among the Piraha people of the Amazon and what he learned about their culture and language during his years trying to convert them to Christianity and translate the Bible into their language, Piraha.

The first section of the book describes the daily trials of living in the Amazon, how the Pirahas live, what they do, and how they intera...more This is one of the most interesting books I've read in recent memory. The author (a former-Christian-missionary-turned-linguist) gives an account of his time spent among the Piraha people of the Amazon and what he learned about their culture and language during his years trying to convert them to Christianity and translate the Bible into their language, Piraha.

The first section of the book describes the daily trials of living in the Amazon, how the Pirahas live, what they do, and how they interact with each other. This section reads like an adventure/travel memoir, with descriptions of several harrowing events and bizarre customs (from a Westerner's point of view). This section kept me up until 3 am because it was so hard to put down.

The second section is about the Piraha language. Even though the author, Everett, is a linguist and even though he makes reference to linguistic concepts throughout this section, he's writing for a general audience, so anyone should be able to follow this section just fine. His writing style is refreshingly free from jargon and academic buzz words, and his explanatory style is clear and easy to follow. That being said, this section is rich and fascinating for linguists who may have heard of the controversy surrounding recursion in Piraha.

The third section, which unfortunately only makes up a small fraction of the book, is about Everett's re-evaluation, and ultimately rejection, of his faith in god and other supernatural ideas. Part of the impetus for this rejection was his observation that no one had been successful in converting the Pirahas for over two centuries, despite a slew of missionaries and despite Everett's own painstaking work in translating the New Testament into Piraha and having many discussions with the Pirahas about Jesus. Even though the Pirahas understood the message Everett was selling, none of them ever expressed the slightest interest in Christianity. Everett's theory is that someone has to feel like they are missing something in their life before they see a need for a belief system and the "redemption" it promises (in other words, you have to feel a need to be "saved" before you will agree to be "saved"). The Pirahas don't have this gap in their lives. They are a happy, productive, well-balanced people who live a life free from anxiety, depression, obsession with sin and punishment, and other Western constructs that one could argue have done more harm than good in our society. The Piraha world view isn't compatible with the need for "saving," because they do not have a "fall from grace" mentality -- they accept who they are and manage to live content lives despite their shortcomings. Everett emphasizes that this is not because they are primitive or simple-minded; on the contrary, his personal impression was that Pirahas live much more responsibly and healthily than many Christian Westerners do, and he maintains that they have a wisdom that we lack, akin to a Zen-like state of acceptance and recognition that the current moment is all we have. Everett comes to respect this world view so much that he begins to analyze exactly why he felt he needed Christianity in the first place, and he eventually reaches the conclusion that any kind of subjective belief system that makes judgmental and far-reaching claims about the universe without any evidence to back it up is unnecessary and often harmful.

I would have liked to have read more about this part of the author's life, but I can understand why he didn't want the whole book to be about his loss of faith -- because this book is really about the Pirahas, not him. And even though this section may be the most striking to many readers, it really does only make up 5-10% of the book's content. And I should also stress that this section is not an angry rant against faith -- quite the opposite. He writes very calmly, pensively, and reasonably on these issues, and with the same perceptiveness and insight with which he approached the rest of the book.

This book is controversial and interesting in several ways, whether you're a linguist or not, religious or not. You'll certainly find food for thought here, no matter where you're coming from.(less)

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Jun 09, 2012 Shane rated it 3 of 5 stars

I first heard about amazon tribes without numbers back listening to radiolab.

http://www.radiolab.org/2009/nov/30/

Later, they had an episode about how words affect your thoughts:
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/

Then I recently listened to a BBC podcast, "a world of ideas" where this author appeared, and I was reminded about the amazon tribes I heard about from radiolab.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/w...

This book was a good introduction to an amazon tribe without numbers and some "typical...more

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Feb 10, 2011 Jill rated it 3 of 5 stars

Daniel Everett is a professor of linguistics at Illinois State University who spent several years among the Pirahã Indians of Amazonian Brazil. [Pirahã is pronounced pee-da-HAN.] This book is a memoir of that time, but it is also a detailed description of the civilization and culture of the Pirahã and an analysis of their very unusual language.

Evaluation: This book is often quite interesting, especially in terms of the linguistic characteristics of the Pirahã and the implications for linguistic...more

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