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

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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. But frequently they use an expression that, though surprising at first, has come to be one of my favorite ways of saying good night: "Don't sleep, there are snakes.

He had many near-death experiences for himself and his family since he was not quite primed for jungle living. Often when I first opened my eyes, groggily coming out of a dream, a Pirahã child or sometimes even an adult would be staring at me from between the paxiuba palm slats that served as siding for my large hut. Though he faces a bunch of hurdles, he is eventually able to learn the language and live among the people.In his book he states although the Pirahas perceive color they do not have simple words for it like we are used to. The Pirahã only concern themselves with directly experienced events, or at least those within living memory. While the rest of the world is slowly being assimilated into a unified, amorphous culture, the Pirahã are going to continue to do their thing. In 1977 Everett, as a linguist and Christian missionary, travelled to live with the Pirahas (which number about 300 people, spread along 250 miles of the Micai river in Brazil) to translate the Bible into their language.

Everyone was streaked from ashes and dust accumulated by sleeping and sitting on the ground near the fire.He mentions, at one point, that the Piraha women douse their fires and run into the jungle to hide when their men are drinking. 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? They always had everything they needed, and life was more or less grand, hence the smiles and laughter. Which is not to say that their lives could not be improved in some ways: their way of dealing with sick or dying children and mothers in childbirth seems to our eyes to be somewhere between hardhearted and barbaric.

I find linguistics fascinating, I enjoy reaing about cultures with entirely different ways of viewing the world from our own, and the book simply has to be packed with engaging stories. However their different culture, stresses/tones, and singing in conversation makes their language one of the hardest to learn. 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". With this volume, I felt privileged to have been given a glimpse into Everett's hard-won insights, gleaned over many years, without having had to sleep among the snakes!The book is absolutely infested with non-scientific views about "everything being in your head", which demonstrates a lack of epistemological knowledge on behalf of the author and sound like science denial for me. But I am so glad that I made the journey—it has given me precious and valuable insights into the nature of life, language, and thought that could not have been learned any other way.

As I was reading that section, I kept thinking to myself about all the things that they do much better than us civilized types.

Now, however, he thinks about it in a different more positive manner by saying that language shapes culture and culture shapes language. A Piraha will always defend or take the side of another Piraha over any non-Piraha, no matter how long he or she has known the latter.