Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle Audiobook (Free)

Daniel Everett, a Christian missionary, arrived among the Pirahã in 1977-with his wife and three little children-intending to convert them. What he discovered was a vocabulary that defies all existing linguistic ideas and reflects a means of life that evades modern understanding: The Pirahã haven’t any counting system and no set terms for color. They haven’t any concept of war or of personal real estate. They live completely in the present. Everett became obsessed with their language and its own ethnic about Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Existence and Vocabulary in the Amazonian Jungle and linguistic implications, and with the exceptional contentment with which they live-so much so that he eventually dropped his faith in the God he’d hoped to introduce to them.

Over three decades, Everett spent a complete of seven years among the Pirahã, and his account of this lasting sojourn is an engrossing exploration of vocabulary that questions modern linguistic theory. Additionally it is an anthropological analysis, an adventure story, and a riveting memoir of the life profoundly affected by exposure to a different culture. Written with extraordinary acuity, awareness, and openness, it is fascinating from 1st to last, wealthy with unparalleled insight into the nature of language, thought, and lifestyle itself.