You’re traipsing through the Amazon, deep in the heart of South America. Suddenly, you stumble upon a tribe with a language unlike any other: Pirahã.

Pirahã is truly one of the most fascinating languages. I reviewed articles from MIT News and The New Yorker (links below) to better understand the unique facets of the Pirahã language.

• No Numbers: The Pirahã language only has “one,” “two,” and “many.” Math class would be a lot easier over there. There are other tribes that follow this “one-two-many” system, but the difference is that they have learned how to count in other languages. This system does seem to affect the Pirahã tribe’s ability to count precisely. One research project discovered that when the tribesmen were shown a line of objects for a few seconds and asked to recreate the line, they were accurate until the line of objects was more than two or three objects long.
• No Colors: Speakers of Pirahã only distinguish between ‘light’ and ‘dark.’ If the tribe needs to describe a certain color, like orange, they will compare the object to something like fire.
• No Recursion: Recursion in linguistics refers to a language’s ability to repeat grammar structures infinitely (e.g., John went to school. John and Jane went to school). The current understanding of the Pirahã language doesn’t have recursion, which means there is an ultimate sentence that cannot be added to. However, given that Pirahã is incredibly hard to learn, this could be wrong if it has been translated incorrectly.
• No Past/Future Tense: The Pirahã tribe lives in the moment. They only use present tense. Some of this concept is mirrored in their belief system. The tribe has no creation myths and when asked about how the world came to be, they responded that, “It has always been this way.”

I find it amazing how the Pirahã language is grammatically simple yet phonetically complex. There is something refreshing about their way of life as reflected in their language. Linguists can learn a lot from the Pirahã language and hopefully work to improve universal ideas about language.

Next time you’re floating down the Maici River in Brazil, pop in on the Pirahã tribe and experience their language for yourself.

Read More

Dizikes, Peter. “Bringing more data to the language debate.” MIT News, 9 March 2016. Available at: https://news.mit.edu/2016/data-amazonian-Pirahã-language-debate-0309

Colapinto, John. “The Interpreter.” The New Yorker, 9 April 2007. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-interpreter-2