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Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett
book_concierge's review
3.0
The subtitle pretty much sums this up: Life and language in the Amazonian Jungle. Everett chronicles his experiences over three decades living among and studying the Piraha, an indigenous tribe. He first went to their villages in 1977, as a Christian missionary and accompanied by his wife and three young children. His mission was to learn their language and translate the New Testament into their native tongue so as to bring Jesus to them. What he found was his life’s work.
Parts of this book are very enjoyable for even a lay person (and armchair traveler). There is plenty of danger in the Amazonian jungle – anacondas with a body thicker than a grown man’s, jaguars, caimans, piranhas, not to mention distrustful natives, malaria, typhoid fever and tarantulas the size of dinner plates. Everett and his family encountered all these and more. Stories of hunts, of a frantic trip upriver to take his critically ill wife and child to a hospital, or of altercations with unscrupulous merchants trying to buy natural resources with cheap liquor were told with flare and I found them fascinating and illuminating. But Everett is a linguistics professor/researcher, and there were chapters devoted to detailed study of the structure of language and the way it shapes (or is shaped by) a culture. I tended to lose interest in those sections of the book that read like a research paper, and sometimes got to the end of the page only to realize I’d understood what I read about as well as I might understand the Piraha language.
Parts of this book are very enjoyable for even a lay person (and armchair traveler). There is plenty of danger in the Amazonian jungle – anacondas with a body thicker than a grown man’s, jaguars, caimans, piranhas, not to mention distrustful natives, malaria, typhoid fever and tarantulas the size of dinner plates. Everett and his family encountered all these and more. Stories of hunts, of a frantic trip upriver to take his critically ill wife and child to a hospital, or of altercations with unscrupulous merchants trying to buy natural resources with cheap liquor were told with flare and I found them fascinating and illuminating. But Everett is a linguistics professor/researcher, and there were chapters devoted to detailed study of the structure of language and the way it shapes (or is shaped by) a culture. I tended to lose interest in those sections of the book that read like a research paper, and sometimes got to the end of the page only to realize I’d understood what I read about as well as I might understand the Piraha language.
aude_reads's review
4.0
The Anth nerd in me found this an interesting. First half is great if you’re looking for adventure stories in the jungle, second half might not be for you if you don’t appreciate linguistics or linguistic anthropology. Worth sticking to the end.
melissagallant_'s review against another edition
3.0
I think this was one of the first books I ever added to Goodreads back in 2014 when I created my account. It's been one of those things where I see it and think "wow, that really is right up my alley, I should seriously grab it from the library sometime soon" and then promptly shift it down a few notches on my "to-read" list in favour of the next fiction book.
This year I am trying to read more non-fiction and it seemed like a great opportunity to cross this one off my list. I am glad I did.
This is a memoir written by a Christian missionary and linguist who lived with the Pirahã, a tribe living in the Brazilian jungle. This tribe's language is unlike any other living language in several respects and Everett proposes that it is shaped partially by their culture. With many real-life examples, he explains how the culture and the language are linked. He posits that study of this language may overhaul our understanding of the human capacity for language and Chomsky's "universal grammar" theory.
The book alternates between anecdotes of Everett and his family adapting to live in the Amazonian rainforest, studies of the Pirahã culture, and linguistic notes in a mostly chronological order. It really is fascinating stuff and although I felt a little lost towards the end when he started to get a bit more heavy-handed with the linguistic theory, I was mostly able to grasp the implications and explanations that he provided to detail the curiosities found in the Pirahã language. I think, though, that I would like to re-read it to solidify my understanding.
The cultural observations were also very interesting - a completely different way of life than what we as privileged Canadians are used to, and a completely different way of thinking as well.
In all - I enjoyed this very much.
This year I am trying to read more non-fiction and it seemed like a great opportunity to cross this one off my list. I am glad I did.
This is a memoir written by a Christian missionary and linguist who lived with the Pirahã, a tribe living in the Brazilian jungle. This tribe's language is unlike any other living language in several respects and Everett proposes that it is shaped partially by their culture. With many real-life examples, he explains how the culture and the language are linked. He posits that study of this language may overhaul our understanding of the human capacity for language and Chomsky's "universal grammar" theory.
The book alternates between anecdotes of Everett and his family adapting to live in the Amazonian rainforest, studies of the Pirahã culture, and linguistic notes in a mostly chronological order. It really is fascinating stuff and although I felt a little lost towards the end when he started to get a bit more heavy-handed with the linguistic theory, I was mostly able to grasp the implications and explanations that he provided to detail the curiosities found in the Pirahã language. I think, though, that I would like to re-read it to solidify my understanding.
The cultural observations were also very interesting - a completely different way of life than what we as privileged Canadians are used to, and a completely different way of thinking as well.
In all - I enjoyed this very much.
aidaninasia's review against another edition
5.0
Wonderfully entertaining and educational book, learning about the Piraha, changed my life is so many ways. Things that I had never considered before because I had not thought there was any other way. I highly recommend this to all. Whether you are interested in linguistics, anthropology, travel or just simply love to learn. This book has something for everyone.
suzemo's review against another edition
2.0
Meh? White missionary man goes to hang out with those primitive brown people in the jungle and learns a lesson and has wacky hijinks along the way! At least for part of the book... I guess if you are into linguistics, this book would be better. But I'm not.
The first part of the book was largely short stories about the author's life with the Piraha, their attitudes, customs, lives. And if it had ended there, I probably would have liked it a whole lot better.
The middle part of the book was all about linguistics, grammar and culture. I liked some of the discussion he had about the effect of culture on grammar (the easy part), but when he got more technical and was talking deeper about theories with grammar and linguistics, I think my eyes glazed over.
At the end, he briefly mentions his conversion to atheism (he originally went to the Piraha as a missionary, primarily to learn their language and translate the Bible), which might have been more interesting if he fleshed out descriptions or explanations of what led to his de-conversion and more about the fallout (both internal and external) that it had in his life.
The writing is not great (or just plain crap). On top of that, some of the descriptions are inconsistent (Everett repeatedly refers to how peaceful the Piraha are, and then mentions violent acts they commit, like a gang rape; he mentions that they don't have a word for "sorry" and then turns around and translates something as "sorry").
I don't know, the book was uneven at best and mind-numbingly boring at worst, but it wasn't terrible or anything. I'm not sure what the point the author was trying to make was. If he wanted to just tell a story, the entire linguistics section needed to be removed or pared down by quite a bit. If this was about the linguistics, maybe it needed a better title.
The first part of the book was largely short stories about the author's life with the Piraha, their attitudes, customs, lives. And if it had ended there, I probably would have liked it a whole lot better.
The middle part of the book was all about linguistics, grammar and culture. I liked some of the discussion he had about the effect of culture on grammar (the easy part), but when he got more technical and was talking deeper about theories with grammar and linguistics, I think my eyes glazed over.
At the end, he briefly mentions his conversion to atheism (he originally went to the Piraha as a missionary, primarily to learn their language and translate the Bible), which might have been more interesting if he fleshed out descriptions or explanations of what led to his de-conversion and more about the fallout (both internal and external) that it had in his life.
The writing is not great (or just plain crap). On top of that, some of the descriptions are inconsistent (Everett repeatedly refers to how peaceful the Piraha are, and then mentions violent acts they commit, like a gang rape; he mentions that they don't have a word for "sorry" and then turns around and translates something as "sorry").
I don't know, the book was uneven at best and mind-numbingly boring at worst, but it wasn't terrible or anything. I'm not sure what the point the author was trying to make was. If he wanted to just tell a story, the entire linguistics section needed to be removed or pared down by quite a bit. If this was about the linguistics, maybe it needed a better title.
branch_c's review against another edition
3.0
A fascinating book, though not entirely in the way I expected it to be. There's an exceptional mixture of aspects here - Pirahã culture, the hardships of jungle life, linguistics, philosophy, and religion. Everett has done a decent job tying all this together into a readable account of his adventures and thoughts. I've always had an interest in language, so to me the linguistic aspect was the most interesting, along with the trials of life in the Amazon.
I was less thrilled with the descriptions of Pirahã culture, mostly because Everett looks at it through the rose-colored glasses of someone whose personal philosophy has been heavily influenced by it. Because their outlook has become part of his worldview, he may tend to emphasize the positive aspects while downplaying the negatives. For example, Everett says "They see themselves as a family - a family in which every member feels obliged to protect and care for every other member" (p. 101). But in the same chapter he discusses an incident in which an orphaned baby was "euthanized" and another case in which a woman died in labor with no help from the villagers. Yes, I understand that in their environment there is often simply nothing they can do about some things, but it seems to me there is vast room for improvement, and their culture as a whole is certainly not one that anyone should want to emulate.
The author develops a concept he calls "immediacy of experience" and ties this to both the culture and the language of the Pirahãs. It's an ambitious idea, but I don't find the conclusions sufficiently justified. For example, he states at one point that "Dreams are not fiction to the Pirahãs. You see one way while awake and another way while asleep but both ways of seeing are real experiences" (p. 131). I doubt the Pirahãs honestly believe this! Surely they often dream about their own friends and family members, right? What happens when they wake up and ask the others what they thought about that experience? Lots of people believe that dreams have some deeper meaning, so I'm not surprised the Pirahãs attach significance to them, but for them to call dreams a "real experience" stretches the meaning of the term "real" too far.
Everett spends a lot of time on the idea that "language and culture are not cognitively isolated from each other" (p. 217). I realize he's reacting to Chomsky and other linguists who would like to see language as "pure" and completely portable from one culture to another. But I think it's fairly obvious that culture and language interact. As a demonstration that language is tied to culture, he gives plenty of evidence for the lack of recursion in Pirahã, which as a non-linguist I find convincing, but I don't think it's such a big issue as he makes it out to be. It seems quite reasonable that there is indeed a genetic "language instinct," possibly even a universal grammar as proposed by Chomsky, and there is also a cognition instinct, and a cultural instinct, and all of these things vary from person to person and from one society to another, blurring into each other as the mind develops. The fact that Pirahã doesn't use recursion in spite of the fact that Chomsky claims the universal grammar contains it is just not all that surprising. There are no doubt plenty of features of human evolution that end up not being used in some or all modern societies. And in the case of recursion, it might well have been useful in Pirahã culture as well, but by random accident the language went down a different path, and now it's reached a "local peak" - maybe it can't change to incorporate recursion at this point because that would require the language to first break down to something less useful and then build itself back up to the higher peak that includes recursion. Evolution doesn't allow such transitions, and it's possible that the evolution of language parallels this.
As far as the Christianity aspect, well, we know from the beginning that Everett's goal is to learn the language so that he can translate the New Testament into Pirahã. So it's a little strange that he doesn't discuss the progress on this at all until near the end of the book, where he says he succeeded in producing a Pirahã version of the Gospel of Mark. The Pirahãs hear it and understand it, but, not surprisingly, are completely uninterested in the message. They don't believe they're lost and see no need to be saved, and most importantly, they don't believe the story of Jesus because there is no evidence for it. Everett attributes this to the "immediacy of experience" principle and pinpoints this as the "last straw" contributing to his own loss of faith (p 271). I applaud him for recognizing this, and I suppose each has to come to this conclusion in his own way, but it's a little surprising that in Everett's case, it took a decade of experience with the Pirahãs to reach it, while he'd likely heard the same message from educated Western atheists and agnostics but disregarded it then.
Finally, Everett takes an unusual turn and puts the search for God in the same category as the search for truth, saying at one point that "it is hard to know what most scientists and philosophers mean when they use the word true" (p. 251). Regarding philosophers, he may be right, but for scientists, it's quite clear! He goes on to ask "Is it possible to live a life without the crutches of religion and truth?" and finishes by suggesting that we "enjoy life as it comes, recognizing the likely futility of searching for truth or God" (p. 273). Again, I applaud him for recognizing that religion is indeed a crutch, but there's no justification for saying the same about truth. Some things really are true about the world, and we have learned many of these things. Many others we might learn in the future, or we might not - the fact that we don't know everything there is to know in no way makes the search futile!
So to me, Everett's conclusions are debatable, but I'm certainly glad I read this book, and I'm impressed with his experiences and the efforts he's made to convey them honestly.
I was less thrilled with the descriptions of Pirahã culture, mostly because Everett looks at it through the rose-colored glasses of someone whose personal philosophy has been heavily influenced by it. Because their outlook has become part of his worldview, he may tend to emphasize the positive aspects while downplaying the negatives. For example, Everett says "They see themselves as a family - a family in which every member feels obliged to protect and care for every other member" (p. 101). But in the same chapter he discusses an incident in which an orphaned baby was "euthanized" and another case in which a woman died in labor with no help from the villagers. Yes, I understand that in their environment there is often simply nothing they can do about some things, but it seems to me there is vast room for improvement, and their culture as a whole is certainly not one that anyone should want to emulate.
The author develops a concept he calls "immediacy of experience" and ties this to both the culture and the language of the Pirahãs. It's an ambitious idea, but I don't find the conclusions sufficiently justified. For example, he states at one point that "Dreams are not fiction to the Pirahãs. You see one way while awake and another way while asleep but both ways of seeing are real experiences" (p. 131). I doubt the Pirahãs honestly believe this! Surely they often dream about their own friends and family members, right? What happens when they wake up and ask the others what they thought about that experience? Lots of people believe that dreams have some deeper meaning, so I'm not surprised the Pirahãs attach significance to them, but for them to call dreams a "real experience" stretches the meaning of the term "real" too far.
Everett spends a lot of time on the idea that "language and culture are not cognitively isolated from each other" (p. 217). I realize he's reacting to Chomsky and other linguists who would like to see language as "pure" and completely portable from one culture to another. But I think it's fairly obvious that culture and language interact. As a demonstration that language is tied to culture, he gives plenty of evidence for the lack of recursion in Pirahã, which as a non-linguist I find convincing, but I don't think it's such a big issue as he makes it out to be. It seems quite reasonable that there is indeed a genetic "language instinct," possibly even a universal grammar as proposed by Chomsky, and there is also a cognition instinct, and a cultural instinct, and all of these things vary from person to person and from one society to another, blurring into each other as the mind develops. The fact that Pirahã doesn't use recursion in spite of the fact that Chomsky claims the universal grammar contains it is just not all that surprising. There are no doubt plenty of features of human evolution that end up not being used in some or all modern societies. And in the case of recursion, it might well have been useful in Pirahã culture as well, but by random accident the language went down a different path, and now it's reached a "local peak" - maybe it can't change to incorporate recursion at this point because that would require the language to first break down to something less useful and then build itself back up to the higher peak that includes recursion. Evolution doesn't allow such transitions, and it's possible that the evolution of language parallels this.
As far as the Christianity aspect, well, we know from the beginning that Everett's goal is to learn the language so that he can translate the New Testament into Pirahã. So it's a little strange that he doesn't discuss the progress on this at all until near the end of the book, where he says he succeeded in producing a Pirahã version of the Gospel of Mark. The Pirahãs hear it and understand it, but, not surprisingly, are completely uninterested in the message. They don't believe they're lost and see no need to be saved, and most importantly, they don't believe the story of Jesus because there is no evidence for it. Everett attributes this to the "immediacy of experience" principle and pinpoints this as the "last straw" contributing to his own loss of faith (p 271). I applaud him for recognizing this, and I suppose each has to come to this conclusion in his own way, but it's a little surprising that in Everett's case, it took a decade of experience with the Pirahãs to reach it, while he'd likely heard the same message from educated Western atheists and agnostics but disregarded it then.
Finally, Everett takes an unusual turn and puts the search for God in the same category as the search for truth, saying at one point that "it is hard to know what most scientists and philosophers mean when they use the word true" (p. 251). Regarding philosophers, he may be right, but for scientists, it's quite clear! He goes on to ask "Is it possible to live a life without the crutches of religion and truth?" and finishes by suggesting that we "enjoy life as it comes, recognizing the likely futility of searching for truth or God" (p. 273). Again, I applaud him for recognizing that religion is indeed a crutch, but there's no justification for saying the same about truth. Some things really are true about the world, and we have learned many of these things. Many others we might learn in the future, or we might not - the fact that we don't know everything there is to know in no way makes the search futile!
So to me, Everett's conclusions are debatable, but I'm certainly glad I read this book, and I'm impressed with his experiences and the efforts he's made to convey them honestly.
kurtadb's review against another edition
3.0
This was fascinating, especially if you got into this article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto. It's not terribly well-written, but it's not bad and it goes by pretty quickly. The biggest problem is his discussion of his challenge to Chomsky's Universal Grammar. He comes off as very defensive and touchy about it. And it feels like he's going after Chomsky personally. There is some history there, as that NYer article notes, but since he doesn't go into it in the book, it sort of feels like you walked into the middle of a conversation. And it detracts from Everett's ability to clearly describe his thesis.
oisincleere's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5