Human beings do not live in the objective world alone…but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society… No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. As Safir writes in “The Status of Linguistics as a Science” (1929): This is the Whorf hypothesis, or sometimes the Whorf-Safir hypothesis. One thing that caught my eye in Don’t Sleep: There are Snakes was Everett’s mention of a hypothesis that language and thought shape each other. Our language shapes how we experience the world. I like the new perspective I gain by visiting a culture that’s alien to me, stepping outside of my worldview and reexamining it. I like this book for the same reason I like watching Star Trek and traveling to other countries. At the beginning of the book, he recounts how his entire village was once standing on the banks of their river, shouting excitedly at the spirit they could see walking on the opposite bank. They do believe in spirits, though-so much that they’re able to see spirits that are invisible to Everett. And they’re virtually unique in that they have no theology-no creation story, and no storytelling at all except about things that happened to individuals who are still alive. Pirahã culture is one of the last in the world that is virtually unaffected by modern society, and thus it’s full of surprises.įor example, the Pirahãs really don’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time and are as likely to go out fishing at 3:00 am as they are at 3:00 pm. No one in the tribe of 300 people spoke anything but Pirahã, and no one else spoke their language.Īs he worked to bridge the communication gap between himself and the Pirahãs, Everett gained a great deal of insight into the effects of language on culture and vice versa. A linguist, he was the first person to translate Pirahã into any other language. He went to live with them as a missionary, but eventually converted to atheism while living with them. The book is the author’s account of his decades with an isolated tribe called the Pirahã. Written with extraordinary acuity, sensitivity, and openness, it is fascinating from first to last, rich with unparalleled insight into the nature of language, thought, and life itself.I’m reading a wonderful book called Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle, by Daniel L. It is also an anthropological investigation, an adventure story, and a riveting memoir of a life profoundly affected by exposure to a different culture. Over three decades, Everett spent a total of seven years among the Pirahã, and his account of this lasting sojourn is an engrossing exploration of language that questions modern linguistic theory. Everett became obsessed with their language and its cultural and linguistic implications, and with the remarkable contentment with which they live - so much so that he eventually lost his faith in the God he'd hoped to introduce to them. They have no concept of war or of personal property. The Pirahã have no counting system and no fixed terms for color. What he found was a language that defies all existing linguistic theories and reflects a way of life that evades contemporary understanding. Daniel Everett, then a Christian missionary, arrived among the Pirahã in 1977 - with his wife and three young children - intending to convert them.
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