A typical Piraha house. High-resolution photo available on Dan Everett’s site.

Meet the language of the Piraha tribe in the Amazon, a melodic language that to the untrained ear sounds like bird songs and is hardly discernible as human speech.

Some more facts:

• 8 consonant sounds (But women only use 7)
• 3 vowel sounds
• One of the simplest language sound systems known
• 3 Pronouns (And these appear to be borrowed from a neighboring tribe)
• No perfect tense
• No past tense
• No numbers
• No fixed color words
• No quanification words
• No evidence of recursion (subordinate clauses)
• The language can be whistled, hummed or sung

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