Deep in the Amazon rainforest, the Pirahã people speak a language that defies everything we thought we knew about human communication. No words for colors. No numbers. No past. No future. Their unique way of speaking has ignited one of the most heated debates in linguistic history.
For 30 years, one man tried to decode their near-indecipherable language—described by The New Yorker as “a profusion of songbirds” and “barely discernible as speech”. In the process, he shook the very foundations of modern linguistics and challenged one of the most dominant theories of the last 50 years: Noam Chomsky’s Universal Grammar.
According to this theory, all human languages share a deep, innate structure—something we are born with rather than learn. But if the Pirahã language truly exists outside these rules, does it mean that everything we believed about language was wrong? If so, one of the most powerful ideas in linguistics could crumble.
Documentary: The Amazon Code
Directed by: Randal Wood, Michael O’Neill
Production : Essential Media, Entertainment Production, ABC Australia, Smithsonian Networks & Arte France
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