>> What if This is All We See
Very interesting account of the author s mission to the indigenous Piraha tribe of Brazil his linguistic research to understand their culture and the profound philosophical changes it made to his own life Everett originally intended to convert the Piraha to Christianity and set out to learn their language and culture so that he could translate the Bible more effectively and convey the gospel message to them accurately Instead as he delved deep into their intentionally isolated culture he found a people who were exclusively rooted in the now in what they could personally see or report They therefore had very little language for abstract notions such as counting no mythology and very little anxiety
Part I recounts Everett s personal encounters with the Piraha Part II is a more technical exploration of their language and its challenges to existing linguistic theory maybe culture shapes everything about our brains and Part III his personal conclusions This third part is the weakest Everett spending all his time as a scientist and in a purely empirical culture has obviously gone native and let his linguistic observations erroneously shape his philosophy Still worth a good read for the first two sections though
>> For both your minds
Daniel Everett might not be the best writer but he got a story to tell
First of all the book is split in two parts which the author clearly separated and that s how we should evaluate them
Part 1 is the story how Everett came to live with the Amazonian Piraha tribe as a missionary and a range of stories of what happened to him and his family there His writing style is not the best but well readable and he manages to convey clear emotions and pictures Sometimes annoying is that he occasionally falls into preaching about his favourite topic language But to keep with it Part 1 is a good although not very structured description of Pirahan life behaviour and most important thinking
Part 2 is a relatively technical piece on the Piraha language It seems the main goal of writing this book was that Everett wanted to disprove part of the Chomsky an theory of language as he tells us living with the Piraha and learning their language to translate the bible made him loose his faith but he found a new love linguistics And this book part 2 describes the Piraha language which as it turns out disproves Chomsky s theory which is still the most influential in linguistics in many respects So this part is rather boring and while part 1 feels like a real life adventure book part 2 is often a bit confusing for anybody without a solid footing in linguistics or philosophy of language It becomes clear that part 1 was not written because of the interesting story Everett wanted to tell but to put his own theory of language into context that language is environment and culture dependent and that what most linguists these days do to sit in an office and analyse grammars is the wrong approach to understanding language and culture
Overall The book is interesting in itself and many of the stories are truly enlightening as the reader is forced to reevaluate his own perception of culture and language and to admit that many things we think are natural even necessary are just cultural artifacts and that maybe not having them would even make us happier Everett describes the Piraha way of thinking and acting in an incredibly thought provoking way e g that nothing is believed for which no eyewitness is alive that what I cannot perceive doesn t exist and that what comes into my perception comes into existence and that there are spirits all around us
The book is a great read although I found the first part in every respect more valuable the second part should be in a separate book for linguists But I guess since Everett wanted exactly that not to happen that people learn a language without understanding culture it is only consistent that he kept them together
Read it enjoy and get an amazingly different viewpoint on life and if its too hard just skip the second part and read only its last chapter where it gets personal again
>> Interesting Absorbing Great Read
Purchased this as a gift Recipient gives it 5 Stars Would definitely recommend
