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  • Brazils Pirahã Tribe: Living without Numbers or Time - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

    I love linguistics and found this article interesting. However, I also found the final paragraph somewhat disturbing. Reminds us we all have the potential to be someone's Lab rat but do we have an obligation to be so... From the page: "But for some, it's already getting too... more

    Reviewed by escocesita Feb 21 2009, 08:48am ( 45 reviews ) • spiegel.de

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  • Rated by thestripedone on Oct 29, 8:52am

    Pretty cool. I always thought Universal Grammar was silly.

  • Rated by Victoria05 on Jun 16, 4:34pm

    Wow, that's mental. Must be a pretty boring culture, to have no history or art anything.

  • Rated by Barrie501 on Jun 12, 6:30am

    BRAZIL'S PIRAHÃ TRIBE: Living without Numbers or Time. Thanks to pocketcultures for this.

  • Rated by pocketcultures on Jun 12, 6:19am

    Interesting. This inconvenient language defies categorisation. We should ask ourselves why it is so difficult to imagine how a language can function without subordinate clauses.

  • Rated by TBto on Jun 10, 6:56pm

    Then some people escaped the flood and they were not related to Noah.

  • Reviewed by bluFox on May 05 2009, 3:55am

    I have always thought that a limited version of Sapir-Whorf theory was correct in most forms of expression including human language computer languages and mathematics.

  • Rated by byau on May 04 2009, 3:05am

    From the page: "The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses. That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of the most hotly debated by linguists." A very interesting article alas it might not be nice to say this, but they seem to have a sad life those guys.

  • Rated by trill42 on Apr 18 2009, 1:52pm

    Fascinating, yet many aspects of the academics' approach seem very condescending and arrogant. Perhaps the tribe was plotting to kill the Everetts in order to stave off cultural imperialism. That a language is rare does not make it inherently worse. Instead of asking why this language doesn't use subordinate clauses, we could ask why other languages do use them and try forcing change on the majority, see how they like it. Or we could figure language mostly serves the people who use it to communicate, not curious outsiders. The language (which outsiders may well still not understand completely) works within their culture.