Don't Sleep: Beware Of Snakes Slithering In The Dark

'Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle' is a book by linguist Daniel Everett, based on his three decades of living and contact with the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil. Everett, then a Christian missionary, arrived among the Pirahã in 1977 with his wife and three young children, intending to convert them. However, he discovered a language that defied all existing linguistic theories and reflected a way of life that evaded contemporary understanding. The Pirahã have no counting system, no fixed terms for colour, no concept of war or personal property, and live entirely in the present. Everett became obsessed with their language and its cultural and linguistic implications, and with the remarkable contentment with which they live. 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. It is also an anthropological investigation, an adventure story, and a riveting memoir of a life profoundly affected by exposure to a different culture.

The Pirahã tribe's unique language

The Pirahã are an indigenous people of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. They are the sole surviving subgroup of the Mura people, and are hunter-gatherers. They live mainly on the banks of the Maici River in Humaitá and Manicoré in the state of Amazonas. As of 2018, they number 800 individuals. The Pirahã call themselves the Híaitíihi or Hiáitihí, roughly translated as "the straight ones".

The Pirahã speak the Pirahã language. They call any other language "crooked head". Members of the Pirahã can whistle their language, which is how Pirahã men communicate when hunting in the jungle. The Pirahã language is one of the phonologically simplest languages known, comparable to Rotokas (New Guinea) and the Lakes Plain languages such as Obokuitai. It has a very small phoneme inventory, with only three vowels and eight consonants. The language is agglutinative, using a large number of affixes to communicate grammatical meaning.

The Pirahã have a simple kinship system that includes baíxi (parent, grandparent, or elder), xahaigí (sibling, male or female), hoagí or hoísai (son), kai (daughter), and piihí (stepchild, favourite child, child with at least one deceased parent, and more). They have no creation myths or origin stories about where their people came from. They do not plan more than a day ahead, do not store food and rarely talk about the future or the distant past. They have no concept of war or of personal property. They live entirely in the present.

The Pirahã language has no fixed terms for colour and no counting system. It does not contain cardinal or ordinal numbers. The Pirahã have words for 'one' (hói) and 'two' (hoí), distinguished only by tone. However, these words actually mean "small quantity" and "larger quantity". There is no grammatical distinction between singular and plural, even in pronouns.

The Pirahã are supremely gifted in all the ways necessary to ensure their continued survival in the jungle. They know the usefulness and location of all important plants in their area, they understand the behaviour of local animals and how to catch and avoid them, and they can walk into the jungle naked, with no tools or weapons, and walk out three days later with baskets of fruit, nuts, and small game. They are also remarkably content with their way of life.

The author's personal life and experiences

Daniel L. Everett was born in Holtville, California, and has worked in the Amazon jungles of Brazil for over 30 years, among more than a dozen different tribal groups. He is best known for his long-term work on the Pirahã language. He has published more than 100 articles, as well as 13 books on linguistic theory, life in the Amazon, and the description of endangered Amazonian languages.

Everett first ventured into the Brazilian jungle as a Christian missionary, with the goal of learning the Pirahã language, translating the Bible into their language, and converting them to Christianity. He arrived among the Pirahã in 1977 with his wife and three young children. Everett's work with the Pirahã led to a personal crisis of faith, and he eventually lost his religion. He also divorced his wife and became an atheist. Everett's work with the Pirahã also led to a crisis of faith in his academic work, as he came to disagree with the theories of Noam Chomsky. Everett's book, 'Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes', is part passionate memoir, part scientific exploration. It is a life-changing tale set among the Pirahã tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil, offering a riveting look into the nature of language, thought, and life itself.

Everett's work with the Pirahã has been the defining mission of his life and is well worth what it has cost him personally. He feels the Pirahã experience has been so important that he has foregone discussing his personal, inner struggles with the difficult environment in depth. Everett has also carried out work with other tribes, including the Paraha tribe of the Maici River in the Brazilian rainforest.

The author's loss of faith

In 'Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes', linguist Daniel Everett recounts his experiences living with the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil. Everett, a Christian missionary at the time, arrived with his wife and three young children in 1977, intending to convert the tribe to Christianity. However, he soon became fascinated by their language and way of life, which defied all existing linguistic theories and reflected a worldview vastly different from his own.

The Pirahã have no counting system, no fixed terms for colours, no concept of war, and no personal property. They live entirely in the present and place great importance on direct, first-hand experience. Everett became obsessed with their language and its cultural and linguistic implications, and with the remarkable contentment with which they live. Over time, he began to question his own beliefs and eventually lost his faith in the God he had hoped to introduce to the Pirahã.

Everett's journey with the Pirahã led him to abandon his faith and adopt a more scientific and anthropological perspective. He spent a total of seven years with the tribe over three decades, during which he translated the Gospel of Mark into their language. However, his efforts to convert them were unsuccessful, as the Pirahã were uninterested in his teachings about Jesus, as they only accepted information based on direct experience or eyewitness accounts.

In addition to his loss of faith, Everett's time with the Pirahã also led to a conflict with the theories of linguist Noam Chomsky. Everett's study of the Pirahã language led him to challenge Chomsky's theory of universal grammar, arguing that the Pirahã language lacks sentence-level recursion. He proposed that culture and grammar are closely linked and that language is shaped by cultural values and beliefs.

Everett's experiences with the Pirahã had a profound impact on his life and worldview. He came to admire their peaceful and contented way of life, which was free from anxiety, depression, and the influence of Western culture and capitalism. He recognised the wisdom in their approach to life and their ability to live in harmony with their environment. Ultimately, his journey with the Pirahã tribe led him to question his own beliefs, abandon his faith, and develop a deeper understanding of language, thought, and life itself.

The Pirahã tribe's way of life

The Pirahã are an indigenous tribe of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil, numbering between 400 and 800 individuals. They are the sole surviving subgroup of the Mura people, from whom they split long before the Mura's first contact with outsiders in 1714. The Pirahã live mainly on the banks of the Maici River in Humaitá and Manicoré in the state of Amazonas. They are hunter-gatherers, with a simple kinship system.

The Pirahã have a unique way of life. They build simple huts and make only a few tools, such as scraping implements, loosely woven palm-leaf bags, bows, and arrows. They use canoes every day for fishing and crossing the river, but they rely on neighbouring communities to build these canoes for them. They take short naps throughout the day and night and rarely sleep through the night. They do not store food and generally eat it when they get it, ignoring lessons in preserving meats. They cultivate manioc plants and make only a few days' worth of manioc flour at a time.

The Pirahã have no concept of numbers or fixed terms for colour. They have no concept of war or personal property and live entirely in the present. They have a very conservative culture and are uninterested in adopting outside influences. They have no creation myths or origin stories and do not plan more than a day ahead. They have a fluid sense of direction, organised by orientation to the river rather than cardinal directions.

The Pirahã language is highly unusual. It is unrelated to any other extant tongue and is based on just eight consonants and three vowels. It has a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths, and speakers can dispense with vowels and consonants altogether, singing, humming, or whistling conversations. The language has no cardinal or ordinal numbers, only concepts for a small or larger amount. It also has no relative clauses or grammatical recursion.

The Pirahã have a strong value of no coercion; one does not tell other people what to do. There appears to be no social hierarchy and no formal leaders. They are supremely gifted in all the ways necessary to ensure their continued survival in the jungle. They know the usefulness and location of important plants, understand the behaviour of local animals, and can walk into the jungle naked and return days later with baskets of food. They believe in spirits that can sometimes take on the shape of things in the environment, such as jaguars, trees, or people.

The Pirahã have shown little interest in adopting Western culture. They did, however, start wearing T-shirts, shorts, and home-sewn cotton dresses in addition to their traditional necklaces. In 2012, a school was opened for the Pirahã community, where they learn Portuguese and mathematics. The Brazilian government also installed a modern medical clinic, electricity, and television in the remote area.

The author's anthropological study

In his book, *Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle*, linguist and former missionary Daniel Everett details his three-decade-long anthropological study of the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in central Brazil. Everett first ventured into the Brazilian jungle in 1977 as a Christian missionary, intending to convert the Pirahã to Christianity. However, he soon became fascinated by their unique language and way of life, which challenged many of his long-held beliefs.

The Pirahã language, unrelated to any other known language, lacks many features considered fundamental to human language, such as numbers, fixed terms for colours, and recursion. Everett's discovery that the Pirahã language does not contain recursion contradicted Noam Chomsky's theory of universal grammar, which posits that recursion is a feature of all human languages. The Pirahã also have a unique way of perceiving and interacting with the world around them. They focus on the "immediacy of experience", only concerning themselves with events that are directly experienced or witnessed by someone they know. This cultural value is reflected in their language, which does not contain abstract concepts or references to the distant past or future.

Everett's study of the Pirahã language and culture led him to question his own beliefs and values. He realised that the Pirahã were content and well-adjusted without the need for Christianity or Western influences. They had no sense of worry or anxiety and accepted life and death as part of the natural order. This led Everett to re-evaluate his own faith and eventually lose his religious beliefs.

In conclusion, Everett's anthropological study of the Pirahã tribe provided valuable insights into the relationship between language, culture, and human cognition. It challenged prevailing theories in linguistics and offered a unique perspective on human nature and spirituality.

Frequently asked questions