About book Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life And Language In The Amazonian Jungle (2008)
Apart from one tricky section on linguistics, at least for someone like myself, this was a fairly good insight into another way of understanding the world. The author tried to avoid the 'noble savage' narrative but was clearly impressed with this group's way of life and perspective on the world. Although his main aim was to evangelise, ending with him losing his own belief, this is not the main focus of the book which discusses the lifestyle and perception of the world of this Amazonian group. This description helps us understand the brief chapter at the end where he mentions his loss of belief and to understand why the Christian ideas he was attempting to bring, have not taken root over 200 years of trying. Here's a tribe in the amazon with a language so completely unlike any other. There is no counting system, no terms for color, no recursion (no phrases within other phrases- everything in the language is a direct assertion) and no passive tense (they have past tense of course, but not passive tense). A missionary and his family go to live with them to learn the language so he can translate the bible into Pirahan, and instead of converting them he ends up being converted. Can you imagine growing up with a language that didn't have coordination or disjunction? There is no way to say "Either John or Bob will come." Instead, in Pirahan you would say "John will come. Bob will come. Hmm. I don't know." and it would be understood by the other speakers that the "Hmm, I don't know" referred to the previous two sentences and meant that either John or Bob would be coming.It's not possible to say something like "Hey Sally, bring me Lucy's sock." There is no way to construct the phrases "Lucy's sock" or even "the sock that Lucy wore." In Pirahan they have to communicate something like "Bring me some of Dan's nails" in three assertions: "Hey Paita, bring back some nails. Dan brought those very nails. They are the same."Their language/culture is fascinating. On the one hand, it seems an idealized culture with everyone being continually reminded by their language to live in the present moment. They don't have anything materially, and have no jealousy for the neighboring tribes and Portugese who have so much more "stuff" than they do. They are a very happy and forgiving people. But this is no Utopia- there ere are tragic stories and some behaviors we find unthinkable. I've always been interested in how language affects culture and visa-versa- and this book about the Pirahan language is indeed a "scientific grenade [lobbed] into the spot where anthropology, linguistics, and psychology meet." If all these observations are correct then this language single handedly discredits some of the largest and most influential theories in linguistics.The book is divided into three parts, and the second part reads more like a narrative nonfiction work than a memoir- delving into language theories and more theoretical stuff. But if you just want the crazy adventure story of a man and his family going deep into the wilderness of the amazon, then you can skip part two. The book is well worth reading either way. (Since writing the review I read a few reviews that complained about the "all over the place" nature of the writing- he does jump around a lot, weaving personal experiences and observations in with thoughts about language and random cultural musings. Didn't matter to me much- because my interest in linguistics is so strong I'm a real sucker for any memoir with a slant like this. But just so you know, yes- it's all over the place and often disjointed. Still 5 stars in my opinion.)
Do You like book Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life And Language In The Amazonian Jungle (2008)?
One of the best cross-cultural books I've ever read.
—kariz
