Dont Sleep There Are Snakes Paperback – January 1, 1994

This was one of the most interesting books that I have ever read. I hasten to add the disclaimer that it might be due to my own personal interest, having grown up as the son of SIL missionaries (the same mission Everett was with) and subsequently rejecting my childhood faith (as Everett did). Whatever the reason, this was a well-written and fascinating narrative.Everett writes of moving, with his family, to live amongst the Pirahã tribe in the Amazon. This book is a clever weave of anecdotes of the author's ordeals living in the jungle with the tribe, which give us a window into this fascinating tribe and their culture and language, while, at all times, remaining engaging and humorous.We learn that the people of the tribe are materially poor with little to no health-care and no long-lasting artifacts. Yet Everett finds them bewilderingly content with their lives and therefore completely inoculated against the sway of the outside world, referring to foreigners with the derogatory term "crooked heads." Despite a century of contact with missionaries and traders no one from the tribe has ever learned a foreign language or converted. Everett claims they value the present and observable so highly that they make no effort to make long-lasting artifacts or to invent creation myths. He claims their contentment and conservatism, rather than any differences in ability, are behind their rejection of bilingualism, written language and foreign culture and goods.After starting out as a Christian missionary with a strong belief in Chomsky's theories of language, Everett is challenged in both beliefs by observing the tribe. He comes to reject Chomsky's theories of universal language, controversially claiming that the Pirahã language lacks sentence-level recursion and that language is much better understood as a product of culture. He finds the cultural value of the present and observable embedded in the Pirahã language which has few kinship terms or abstract concepts. He also comes to reject Christianity through the tribe's gentle skepticism: they doubt its usefulness due to their own contentment and because Everett has never met Jesus personally and therefore cannot answer such basic questions as Jesus' skin colour.The book ends with a plea from Everett to preserve minority languages. From his thesis as language as an embodiment of culture, Everett sees the loss of a language as more than the loss of an abstract, arbitrary set of symbols for communicating, but as the loss of a set of solutions for the universal problems of life: meaning, relationships and values. The Pirahã tribe exists a 300 people living precariously in one area rapidly being encroached by the outside world, and yet there is so much more we have to learn from just this tribe, let alone the many others at risk.It is an excellent book and reveals much about Everett and the Pirahã's contribution to our understanding of human language. It also communicates an existential challenge: a tribal group that finds satisfaction without materialism or modern science and technology seems to live happily and contentedly (near the end of the book Everett relates to the tribe the trauma of his step-mother suiciding which causes amusement as "Pirahã don't kill themselves").My one disappointment, which doesn't reflect poorly on the book but the blurbs: it contains little about the process of Everett's rejection of Christianity. The focus of this book is squarely, and rightfully, on the Pirahã and their language. However, Everett does mention that for nearly 20 years of being a missionary he was secretly an atheist, his subsequent "coming out" has lead to the breakup of his marriage and conflict with his children. Since these events happened only a few years before this book was published perhaps such stories were too fresh to be told. Perhaps partly out of desire to understand my own change better, I do hope that Everett writes another book where he can focus on the process of changing his core beliefs, the struggles of living with that change internally for so many years and finally the challenge of "coming out." He has already demonstrated himself a generous communicator with a rich personal history and I hope that he will share more of his stories with us in the future.Thanks to DM for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

This is an important book, in that the author’s discovery of the (so far as is is currently known) unique language feature of the Piraha Indians, non-recursive sentence structure, shows an effect of culture on language strong enough to make the Chomskyan “universal grammar” theory appear to be less than universal.I found the book a fascinating account of a USA born linguist and Christian missionary given an extremely difficult challenge, to decipher an isolated language of an Amazonian jungle people and then translate the New Testament into their language. Which translation, after he had learned their language, turned out to be impossible. Not only were these happy, independent (dangerous if drinking alcohol) people unimpressed with religion, their effect on the author caused him to abandon blind faith in favor of trusting his perceptions and reason.Dr Everett provides an exciting, astounding account of the Pirahas, their daily lives, and his life living among them with his wife and three children, especially their life-changing effect on him. He also goes into much detail about the difference between his changed views about the relationship between grammar, culture, and human ‘grammar instinct’. I’m not that interested in the fine points of linguistics, but I could see how being aware of such could be valuable in examining other little-known languages and avoiding errors through theory-bias.For me the anthropological descriptions and information of these unique Piraha, all 300 or so of them, made this a worthwhile read. The difficult linguistics discoveries very interesting, as well as the author’s struggle with his beliefs and the eventual triumph of reason over blind faith. It could have been edited for a smoother read, but that would be nitpicking when I think of what torture the author went through, eg, clouds of mosquitos and other biting insects, ubiquitous 3-inch long cockroaches, tarantulas, snakes, crocodiles, jaguars, 110 degree humid heat, malaria which almost killed his wife and a daughter, dangerous confrontations with Brazilian traders,etc.in this heroic project.

A book that changed the way I think about culture. The book is roughly 70% story and the rest is a mix of linguistics and essay explaining Everett's Immediacy of Experience Principle and arguing various linguistic theories. For those less interested in linguistics it's probably good news that there is a clear division of the material. You know when the story is over and the linguistics begin.I liked the stories. They are based on the authors' experiences in the Brazilian rain forest with the Pirahãs- fascinating stuff there. Some are classic adventure stories with elements of danger, limited time, and obstacles. Others highlighted extreme differences between the Pirahãs culture and the author's. The stories generally made me feel something: anger, happiness, relief, etc. I'd have read the book just for these. I found the linguistic chapters a little dry, but interesting. They weren't academic enough that I skipped any of them.For me, a non-linguist, there was too much argument about various linguistic theories, especially Chomsky's take on Universal grammar. I learned something and for that I'm thankful, but a lot of it was repetitive. In my head I yelled "Alright, I've got it already!" a couple of times.Overall a great book because it's interesting, I learned something, and it made me think.

If you're a layperson with an interest in linguistics or Amazonian tribes, this book is right up your alley. Not overly technical, but engaging, and interesting.

Ótimo livro. Uma narrativa que prende o leitor do início ao fim. Textos leves e de grande profundidade.

Really enjoyed the book. I'm an English learner and it has teached many things about language. Beside is an amazing story about the piranha people and his own conversation into atheistsm

Mr. Everett is a fantastic story teller. Beyond that he moves the reader through many facets of his own resonance life, his life as a missionary and of course as a linguist. That makes us witnesses of the micro and the macro at the same time and it is quite a feat. Mr. Everett puts a mirror to our society and asks all the right questions that, if you are into more stuff than the present, will help us looking at our future.

This book will be of great interest to anyone with an interest in the Social Sciences or Linguistics. The author -with his family - spent over two decades living with a tribe of hunter-gatherers in the jungle . He became proficient in their language and used it to gain insight into a way of life that is probably now disappearing .The language itself had many unusual feature- no words for numbers or colours or left or right . The tribes-people seemed to be very resistant to outside influence and reject any changes to their way of life . But despite the hardships of their lifestyle these people seem adapted to their world and happy. The author is no starry-eyed romantic but intelligent and insightful . He obviously knew these people very well and this knowledge forms his conclusions . I recommend this book to anyone interested in either other societies- or our own .

Really interesting and well written.This is the book forming the basis for Tom Wolfe's recent short book on language.Lot's of day-to-day interactions as well as cultural and linguistic analysis.