Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Vintage Departures) |  | Author: Daniel L. Everett
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
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Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 16,345
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0307386120
Dewey Decimal Number: 301
EAN: 9780307386120
ASIN: 0307386120
Publication Date: November 3, 2009
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Product Description
A riveting account of the astonishing experiences and discoveries made by linguist Daniel Everett while he lived with the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in central Brazil.
Daniel Everett arrived among the Pirahã with his wife and three young children hoping to convert the tribe to Christianity. Everett quickly became obsessed with their language and its cultural and linguistic implications. The Pirahã have no counting system, no fixed terms for color, no concept of war, and no personal property. Everett was so impressed with their peaceful way of life that he eventually lost faith in the God he'd hoped to introduce to them, and instead devoted his life to the science of linguistics. Part passionate memoir, part scientific exploration, Everett's life-changing tale is riveting look into the nature of language, thought, and life itself.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 39
 A Book It's Hard to Put Down November 22, 2008
KmVictorian (Central Illinois)
62 out of 65 found this review helpful
If you like strange languages and exotic jungle adventures, you'll love this book. It has plenty of both!
The author, Daniel L. Everett, is Chair of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University. He spent many of his younger years living with and studying the aboriginal Piraha people of Brazil. Their language "defies all existing linguistic theories" and "reflects a way of life that evades contemporary understanding." Unrelated to any other known language, the Piraha dialect is so confusing that most outsiders have given up on it. The Pirahas whistle and hum as they talk, and a given verb can potentially have as many as 65,000 forms. Everett, however, has been able to puzzle out the strange grammatical quirks of Piraha expressions.
This book tells in fascinating detail about Everett's struggles with the language, the land, and the culture of the Pirahas. This struggle ultimately cost the author his faith and broke up his family. The language theories which he developed as a result of his acquaintance with the Piraha tongue have also put him in conflict with the ideas of distinguished linguist Noam Chomsky.
However, it is obvious that Everett feels the Piraha experience has been the defining mission of his life and is well worth what it has cost him personally. I recommend this book both for its page-turning excitement and its insights on the nature of human language.
Don't Sleep, You Aren't Done With This Book Yet December 9, 2008
Sacramento Book Review (Sacramento, CA)
38 out of 40 found this review helpful
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When Rome is a fairly small tribe called the Pirahã, it means that Dan Everett has to give up numerous cultural and ideological foundations that are so second nature to him (and all of us) that he, for a time, no longer noticed that he exhibited them. Picture no counting, at all, ever. No names for colors.
No personal property. These are the hallmarks of the seemingly alien Pirahã, and as one could imagine they led to nothing less than a jarring and sometimes terrifying culture shock. Originally venturing to the tribe in an attempt to convert them to Christianity, to try to teach them something, Everett found himself baffled and enticed by the Pirahãn language and method of thinking and living, and ended up becoming a student of their way of life, as opposed to the other way around.
In an intense and deeply absorbing account, Everett opens up completely and lays his encounters with these mystifying people out for all to see. Taking on the Pirahãn "The past is the past and does not matter. Only now matters." attitude, he includes all of the most gruesome, embarrassing, and enlightening details of his journey with no regard to how any of it may be perceived. What results is a genuine and engrossing book that is both sharp and intuitive; it closes around you and reaches inside of you, controlling your every thought and movement as you read it. You breathe when it breathes, you go where it goes, and after you're finished a large part of it remains behind, so that it is impossible to forget.
Reviewed by Jordan Dacayanan
An Amazon tribe converts the missionary April 16, 2009
Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA)
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
The Pirahã are the "Show me!" tribe of the Brazilian Amazon. They don't bother with fiction or tall tales or even oral history. They have little art. They don't have a creation myth and don't want one. If they can't see it, hear it, touch it or taste it, they don't believe in it.
Missionaries have been preaching to the Pirahãs for 200 years and have converted not one. Everett did not know this when he first visited them in 1977 at age 26. A missionary and a linguist, he was sent to learn their language, translate the Bible for them, and ultimately bring them to Christ.
Instead, they brought him to atheism. "The Pirahãs have shown me that there is dignity and deep satisfaction in facing life and death without the comfort of heaven or the fear of hell and in sailing toward the great abyss with a smile."
Not that they have escaped religion entirely. Spirits live everywhere and may even caution or lecture them at times. But these spirits are visible to the Pirahãs, if not to Everett and his family, who spent 30 years, on and off, living with the tribe.
But they don't have marriage or funeral ceremonies. Cohabitation suffices as the wedding announcement and divorce is accomplished just as simply, though there may be more noise involved. Sexual mores are governed by common sense rather than stricture, which means that single people have sex at will while married people are more circumspect.
People are sometimes buried with their possessions, which are few, and larger people are often buried sitting "because this requires less digging." But there is no ritual for each family to follow.
"Perhaps the activity closest to ritual among the Pirahãs is their dancing. Dances bring the village together. They are often marked by promiscuity, fun, laughing, and merriment by the entire village. There are no musical instruments involved, only singing, clapping, and stomping of feet."
Everett's language studies began without benefit of dictionary or primer. None of the Pirahãs spoke any English or more than the most rudimentary Portuguese (Among their many eccentricities is their total lack of interest in any facet of any other culture including tools or language - not that they won't use tools, like canoes, they just won't make them or absorb them into their culture).
Amazingly, "Pirahã is not known to be related to any other living human language."
At first it seems rather deprived. There are only 11 phonemes (speech sounds). There are no numbers, no words for colors. No words for please, thank you or sorry. There are, however, tones, whistles and clicks. And the language comes in three forms - regular plus Humming speech and Yelling speech.
Over the years Everett comes to the conclusion that the Pirahã language reflects and arises from their culture in its directness, immediacy and simplicity. Ultimately he defies Noam Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar (Pirahã lacks a basic requirement) and starts a firestorm in the linguistics field. Everett alludes mildly to this in the book, but a little Internet browsing will leave readers shocked - shocked! - at the way linguists talk to one another.
There are plenty of anecdotes involving the reader in Everett's adventures, hardships, terrors, epiphanies and the pure strangeness of daily life with a people who live in the immediate present and whose most common "good-night" is "Don't sleep, there are snakes." (sound sleep is dangerous and, besides, toughening themselves is a strong cultural value - foodless days are also common).
Fascinating as both anthropological memoir and linguistic study, Everett's book will appeal to those interested in very not-North American cultures and in the ways people shape language and it shapes us.
It's a book that rouses a sense of wonder and gives rise to even more questions than it answers.
Quote from Mr. Everett, "There were lessons from all of us" January 22, 2009
L. Jonsson (Charleston, SC United States)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
The book "Don't Sleep, there are snakes" is about the study of the Piraha Indians in Brazil by the linguist Daniel Everett. Everett sets out with his family in 1977 to study the unusual language of the Piraha Indians, and to convert them to Christianity. Referring to the quote above Everett and his family do not get what they expected. Instead, the author finds himself admiring the natives, and their non-violent culture so much that he finds himself tolerating, and learning from their practical ways. Everett grows disenchanted with the christian religion as a result of his living with the Pirahas.
The Piraha language is like no other in existance, and does not seem similar to any other languages. There are very few vowels in their language, and consonants that are pronounced one way in this language are pronounced very differently in Piraha. There are few if any references to personal property in the culture or in the language, and there is no mathmatical system.
Everett also discusses the differences in the Piraha culture and the American culture. Sexuality is very open, and the author cites many references to nudity and sexual occurances that are done publically. The Piraha culture have few to no rituals, even involving when a death occurs. There is evidence of marriage, but no ceremony to determine when someone is married. And there is virtually no health care-if someone gets sick and dies, it is all seen as the way of the world, and no attempts are made to do anything to prevent a death from disease or a wound. Everett feels that the Pirahas are the most content and at peace people he has ever seen, despite the fact they have no desire to know about how the universe works or to better themselves.
One of the many things that fascinated me about this book was that the author only aluded to his own life, and did not discuss in depth his personal, inner struggles with the difficult environment. The author's brother died at age 6, and his stepmother died when he was 11. We only get brief glimpses of how this affected him. Also, at some point, the author's marriage broke up. When did this happen? How? Was it a direct result of living in the jungle with the Pirahas? What is his relationship like with his three children? If Everett is no longer a Christian, then what is he now?
Everett's book is enchanting, and engrossing. It is very difficult to put down once you begin reading it (even if you do not have a background in linguistics). The pictures of some of the people Everett encountered also add to the content of the book.
kaoogioxixboxioogiokiookiokiookiixooxi February 14, 2009
EGD (Seattle, WA)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Daniel Everett's Don't Sleep There Are Snakes is a memoir in two parts. Part I recounts Everett's experiences and adventures living with the Paraha tribe of the Maici River in the Brasilian rainforest. Part Margaret Mead, part Albert Camus, and Part Indiana Jones, it's a rich account of travel, wildlife, cultural immersion, and profound learning, alternated with times of fear, peril, and profound alienation. Part II centers on the particulars of Everett's linguistics research and drags the reader on a (somewhat less-stimulating) anthropological voyage through the esoteric jungle of grammar, intonation, and recursion. One of the most unique books that will be published this year, Don't Sleep There Are Snakes drips with emotion, teems with science, and reminds us all why we all want to be anthropologists (okay, archaeologists--close enough) when we grow up.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 39
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