Reddit reviews Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Vintage Departures)

/u/KaleHavoc mentions the Piraha, which I'll expand on a little. They're not religious in the sense that they believe in god or the devil or have ritual. They don't have a creation myth, they don't have churches, and they have no worship. They do, however, have superstitions, so to speak, and believe that spirits walk among them.

The curious thing about the spirits though is that it appears to be a group delusion that everyone knows about, but maybe pretends isn't real.

Dan Everett has a very interesting book about them called "Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle." In one story he relates how the village hears a "spirit" calling from the woods over the course of several days. He identifies the source as one of the villagers, but when asked, the villager flat out denies that it was him.

In another story, a large group of villagers claims to see a spirit on the opposite side of the river from where Everett and the villagers are. Everett can't see the spirit, but everyone agrees that it's visible.

The Piraha are also known (or at least, Everett believes) as having one of the world's completely unique languages. The language is missing tenses in the way we think of them, and has no memory generally beyond the lifetime of those currently alive.

I'd really recommend the book. It's quite interesting.

You would love the book, Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes. by Daniel Everett. He was a christian missionary sent to the Amazon to study the Pirahã, a small indigenous tribe, and translate their language so that he could recreate the bible in their native tongue.

He ends up breaking with the "universal grammar theory" in which it is thought all languages have certain common grammatical similarities (he also ends up breaking entirely with his religion). The Pirahã have a completely unique sense of time, evidence, and culture. It truly is a fascinating world they survive in, and an equally well told story.

Okay, a little controversial and not that sexually focused but Don't sleep, There are snakes provides quite a bit of insight about living with an isolated tribe.

I would read some more "casual" or pop linguistics books to really cement your interest in linguistics before any of the more heady pieces of literature scare you off. As a side note, I'd learn the English IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) chart before you pursue further literature. Not knowing would be like performing math calculations without knowing what any of the operator signs were. As a high schooler, this is your time to read. God knows you won't have as much time to do it in college. Only after you get a general feel for what linguists actually do and study, would I recommend making a choice, it's certainly not for everyone :)

Great story demonstrating just how different certain languages can be.
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335511683&sr=8-1

If you want a great pop introduction that'll really help you tap your toe on the vast ocean surface known as linguistics, I'd give this a try too http://www.amazon.com/The-Stuff-Thought-Language-Window/dp/0143114247/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335511905&sr=1-2

If you like what you read, and think it would be admirable to contribute to the swiftly growing pool of knowledge we currently have in this wonderful field, then pursue more academically oriented sources, and as others said, maybe narrow your interests further by contacting a certain professor or researcher. Hope this helped :)

Good find! I could watch this for hours.

I wish all anthropology and linguistics departments did this demonstration once a semester/quarter, not just for students, but for the public. It's fun to see structure and rules emerge in only a few minutes of interaction. It's difficult to think about linguistics or cultural anthropology and not start recognizing the arbitrariness of our own ways of thinking and communicating. That kind of confrontation/awareness/seeing is really invaluable; it's good for everyone.

Everett's book "Don't Sleep There Are Snakes" is a really fun field memoir of his time with the Piraha. One need not be a linguist to understand and enjoy it. It's not heavy on the academic linguistic stuff. It's sort of light linguistic and light ethnography. So if anyone finds something in this lecture intriguing, I'd recommend checking it out. Piraha is one of the most interesting languages I've come across. https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498712271&sr=8-1&keywords=daniel+everett

He also spoke at The Long Now Foundation about the Piraha, and about saving disappearing/endangered languages. https://soundcloud.com/longnow/endangered-languages-lost-knowledge-and-future

If anyone watched "Arrival" and thought "hey that looks interesting", guess what! You can do that! Even without aliens. It's almost just as hard, and definitely a lot of fun.

Actually, if you saw "Arrival" and thought "hey that seems neat" or "ugh this is NOT how linguistics and aliens would work" or whatever, then you might be interested in a collection of articles put together by NASA into one document called "Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication" which goes a bit more into the history of concepts around alien contact scenarios. https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/archaeology_anthropology_and_interstellar_communication.html

I think it was this article.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thefreethinker/2008/11/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist/

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307386120/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Which country were you in (if you don't mind saying)? Are your parents still missionaries? Which mission organisation sent them out, or did they go on their own?

How has the experience affected your own faith (or lack of it)?

Have you ever read (as an aside), Don't Sleep There are Snakes by Daniel Dennett? He worked among Amazon Indian tribes as a missionary linguist and was eventually deconverted as a result of how the tribespeople lived. The book isn't about his deconversion - he mentions that in the afterword only, but more about his experience with the culture he was working in, and the peculiarities (to a Westerner) of their language and world view. Highly recommended.

My experience is that grad school is actually a pretty great time to have kids, if you can keep up with your work. Babies aren't really on a schedule too early, and it's a lot easier to spend 40 hrs/week working on your thesis/obligations at your convenience, rather than working 9-5 and looking after young children at the same time. You have to maintain the motivation to keep up with your work when the (baby/child) is down, but it's certainly not a bad time to be a parent. It is difficult not to just want to sleep when everyone is quiet, but if you have the motivation to do that, if I had the choice to go back and re-visit some of my decisions, I would have no hesitation about doing grad school instead of working when I had infants.

You're going to be exhausted no matter what you do (SAH parents are just as exhausted as working parents), and I would rather do something I love, and get paid for, rather than just a job that I had to do.

I don't think that there's a wrong decision here. I've known a lot of people who became very unhappy when they were living the academic life daily, but it does work well for some people. Most of my 'academic' friends didn't have children until after they were tenured, which meant that there were different pressures. I'm also Canadian, which might make a difference in terms of what to expect as a tenured professor.

My best advice (as someone who is currently a mom) is to do what makes you happy, and while you're doing that, also put the rest of your family's needs as a high priority. I've got a pretty complicated family (triplets, all autistic, one cancer kid, one divorce), but I still kind of wish that I was a history prof :-)

Just be aware of what your choices are, because there will always be positives and negatives no matter which road you choose. It's more than possible to be emotionally and intellectually involved in your career choice, and still be a great parent/partner. It's also possible to be so fixated on your own happiness that you neglect everyone else's.

I still haven't found a point where I say "this is absolutely what I want to do, and everything else needs to revolve around that". I've made choices (in full knowledge of what I was giving up or gaining), but I think that it might be less of a choice to your age group, in that you might not have to make an either/or choice. My kids are now 15, and some of them say "but you don't have a full-time job" and some of them say "you actually thought that history was important", and most of the time, all of us agree that I'm a pretty decent parent who is accomplishing good things in various areas. It still makes me twinge when a child comes across an old research paper and says "wow- you used to know stuff?" I still know 'stuff', but it's different :-)

Do what feels right, and good, for you. My guess is that my children's generation would be a lot happier if they had happier parents, and if my generation of women hadn't been faced with either/or choices. Go for what you are passionate about, treat your family with the respect, decency, attentive time, and love that you'd expect for yourself, and do what feels right. If you love (and by "love" I mean respect your children, do what is right for them to the best of your understanding give them care and comfort, teach them basic skills and the knowledge that people are interesting, make different choices, and and are decent people, and you'll probably be fine.

I don't think that there are easy choices to be made for women, but I think that you can't go wrong by trying to set your priorities (if you have common sense), by showing your family (partner and kids) that you are happy, doing what you want to be doing, and still giving love and affection at the same time that you take love and support from them. From what you've written you don't seem oblivious to your partner's/future children's needs, so you'll probably make the right choice.

I'm not sure that there's a wrong decision. After I gave up my hopes of academic brilliance I worked in a (large) University environment for a long time, and although I miss the research and what I hoped to achieve, I sure don't miss academia. Now, you couldn't pay me enough to go back into an academic environment full-time, but I don't regret the time that I spent just learning knowledge and doing research, and I'll probably be doing that again when my kids leave home.

Do what intrinsically feels good to you, and trust your common sense to make up for the rest. It's possible in any field now to make a splash without being an academic- the latest linguistics book that I read was "Don't Sleep, there are Snakes", but one of my kids' speech therapists did her PhD in linguistics before she decided to go back to speech therapy, and she's been incredible for my kids.

Do what feels right (and as you can tell by my babbling, I'm definitely history/english, and not linguistics!)

You'll work it out.

> the concept of omnipotent being is universal

Nope. It isn't. Check out the Pirahã People of South America. They do not have a concept of a god.

If you want to read a really interesting book sometime, check out Don't Sleep, There are Snakes written by the missionary who was sent to convert these people who ended up being deconverted by the tribe.

There are many videos of him on youtube. Here's one.

Edit: Here's another.

> I will deconvert if you prove me wrong.

I doubt you'll do that.

My linguistics experience is limited, mostly coming from a philosophy and comp sci background, so I am sure someone can answer this better than I, but I'll give it a shot.

Universal Grammar has always been controversial, Chomsky is more important for 'Chomsky Hierarchies' and generative grammar.

Some linguists call it pseudoscience, mostly because its all based on post-hoc observation, we already have language so thinking about what comes before it is incredibly hard. Criticism has grown alongside the use of computer modeling for this stuff, but we still don't have a definitive neuroscientific answer.

It's been a few years and I can't seem to find the book I am thinking of, but I recall reading a book that attempts to bridge the gap between Chomsky and Daniel Everett, Don't Sleep There are Snakes (a fanastic read but not what I am thinking of), whom makes some of the most compelling arguments against universal grammar.

I would not say that he went in the wrong direction, even specifically referring to universal grammar, because it helped to promote discussion on the subject even if it was by being controversial.

TL;DR Chomsky is always controversial, but he is very clever and is hard to disprove

Don't sleep there are snakes.

> 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.

http://www.amazon.ca/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120


Deconversion is literally like 3 pages long. Long book about what a godless society looks like.

Don't Sleep There Are Snakes

Don't Sleep There Are Snakes - Excellent read about a linguist's study of an Amazon tribe with a language unlike any other. Contains very interesting musings and science regarding how language and culture can affect how we perceive the world around us.

The Evolution of Useful Things - Very cool read if you are at all an engineering or design inclined person. The author has a great way of weaving in cultural and historical context into how all the tiny and useful things around us have evolved and come to represent very specific functions.

I've been reading Don't sleep, there are snakes and the author discusses how Pirahã is one such language. That's what gave me the idea.

Go to your local library and check this book out

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261514973&sr=8-1

Quite an interesting read.

Check out Don't sleep, there are snakes by Daniel Everett , a fascinating look at another culture with a language so different to what we consider the norm.

Here is a video snippet

Actually, it is. He wrote a memoir documenting his experiences with the tribe.

I read it in a summer linguistics class since Daniel Everett is a linguist himself and we watched a little bit of the film version of the book that focuses more on the linguistics aspect of it as opposed to the deconversion. I didn’t end up becoming a linguistics major (and if I had, my dad probably would’ve pulled financial support because linguistics doesn’t result in a real job /s), but I still found the class interesting and I did pretty well for someone who knew nothing going in.

It was my first experience (I read it like a high school AP Lit student would read an assigned book: not really) with a deconversion from Christianity to atheism. I’m sure if my dad’s girlfriend (fundie-lite evangelical) or maybe even my dad had heard what I was reading for school, they’d accuse the university of forcing atheism on people of faith, even though that wasn’t even the purpose of us reading the book.

Read this one if you get a chance:
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120

Awesome book about an Amazonian tribe by linguist Daniel Everett

No its not. Your cynicism is blinding you to the value cultures like these have, that our modern cultures are desperately lacking. Of course they had their shortcomings and some were even violent by our standards, but their cultural pathos pale in comparison to ours. You should check out "Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes" by Daniel Everett. It's a first hand account of a missionary in the Amazon who ends up abandoning his Western beliefs for a much simpler way of life. It's a fascinating story and in this ever advancing world, one that is becoming harder and harder to tell. Please don't throw what we could learn from them under the bus because of their shortcomings.


http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120 - Here's the Amazon link, its a great book, you won't regret it!

I'd recommend the book "Don't sleep, there are snakes" whichdescirbes their language and their way of life. It's HacksawJimDGN's "Golden Banana pick of the month TM"

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120

Piraha. A primitive but comparatively incredibly happy and free culture that has no concept or want for math, personal wealth, or material possessions. They have a well developed sense of humor but their humor has nothing to do with suffering, because that type of humor just isn't a part of their society. That book is an extreme eye opener.

Everett's book is fascinating (from a linguistic standpoint especially): http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323629930&sr=8-1

I would love a Daniel Everett AMA. I also recommend that book to anyone.