Living without numbers and time explains the small group of people of the Brazil's Piraha. The Piraha's language is the most grammatically challenging for Linguists because they hardly use any words associated with time, past tense verb and conjugations don't exist. Their language does not have any words to describe past tense such as liked or finished. This challenges linguists because it allows the Piraha language to go without subordinate clauses and it doesn't help the theory of how homo sapiens learn vocal language. It is further from the existing theories of how language is formed. The most influential theorist cannot understand Piraha's language because it is completely different form the cultures that surrounds them geographically. Furthermore, the Piraha's interact with those neighboring cultures frequently which makes the Linguists understanding increasingly complex. Along with not using past tense words and having only three pronouns in their language they also go without colors and numbers. They don't have a way of saying "It is 5 o'clock" or " I have one purple frog" . The simplistic culture of the Piraha's baffled Linguist Dan Everette so much that it took him seven years to publish his findings. Through his finding he realized after unsuccessfully trying to teach the Piraha how to count to ten in Spanish, that "people are only capable of constructing thoughts for which they possess actual words". It is best to think of The Brazilian Piraha's with the theory of The language being created by the culture because their culture is based on "live here and now."
From reading this article, I understand that this language is not a common language. There are many myths and theories that go behind this particular language. Using this language, it is only affective to me personally because you are to speak in code. This language is for when one wants to keep their information or business confidential. This language allows thosw who speak to understand each otha, when nobody else understand that doesn't speak that Piraha language.
ReplyDeleteThis particular language would be very confusing, because of the lack of verb tenses. You would not know whether the activity would be occurring now, in the past, or in the future. Teaching students this language would not be easy. Although, each culture has a different form of language. If a person was born into that language, it would not be difficult. This language would only be difficult it if were not your language norm.
ReplyDeleteThis language is not very common, and seems live it is very confusing. This language seems like it needs to be a secret, and only used when talking with someone els that would speak the same language. There is no possible way that we could tell if the person is talking i the present, past, or future. This is not a common language and it should stay that way.
ReplyDeleteI think this language would be some what difficult, because it seems really confusing. I think that it would be hard to identify if a person was talking in the present, the past, or the future; this has been previously mentioned. I do not believe that it is a very effective language to have.
ReplyDeleteIt would be hard to communicate with people that speak this language. I can tell that it is not a popular language at all. This language should not be taught to anyone else becasue it doesnt make sence. They don't even have names for colors or numbers. Lame
ReplyDeleteThis language seems very bizarre to me. I don't understand how they communicate with out using any form of time. It would be hard to tell someone something but not express if it already happened or if it's going to happen. This language seems very confusing. However, like most languages I guess if you were born into it you would be use to it.
ReplyDeleteThis language is pretty complex in my opinion. I feel that it is not really worth learning due to its complexity and confusing aspects. We have a bunch of other languages in this world that are easier to understand than this.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the learning of this language would be pointless. First off, it's very confusing for someone like me who wasn't born learning of this language. If unaware of this language, trying to teach it to someone would be difficult because it wouldn't make sense. Due to the fact that this language isn't a common language, it would be very difficult to teach.
ReplyDeleteI found this article highly interesting in the fact that people can not comprehend something if they have no word or symbol for a concept. Witnessing the difficulty in understanding and speaking the Piraha language, I find it positive that there is a language so rare compared to languages being spoken today. This language could be a key to something. I also believe that the fact that the Piraha language is so hard to perceive speaks a lot about the people who speak it.There level of intelligence is at an ambiguous height.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this article I have concluded that the language of the Piraha could be very difficult to understand. I dont get how a language could be understood without words associated with time.
ReplyDeleteThis particular language seems difficult because numbers are used more than words. Piraha language take a lot of time and patience to understand. It really makes me appreciate English a lot. Communicating with people who spoke this language would be very difficult.
ReplyDeleteThis language is very unorthodox and would be difficult to learn for anyone that isn't raised around it. It would be very difficult to understand the language because of the lack of colors, numbers, pronouns and conjugations. In addition to these aspects of the language, perhaps the most important is the lack of past tenses verbs, making it difficult to speak on matters with regard to time.
ReplyDeleteThe Piraha language is a language that can not be associated with any other languages. Even a linguist who knows about diverse languages, it took him seven years to publish his findings with the Piraha language. On the contrary, an author could publish a book about the English language in less than six months because so much is known about it. Also for a language to not even have a past tense seems very rare and confusing yet they have maintained the language for hundreds of years and the diversity is good in today's society.
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