- Overview
The Grammar Of Happiness follows the story of Daniel Everett among the extraordinary 'nonconvertible' Amazonian Pirah tribe, a group of indigenous hunter- gatherers whose culture and outlook on life has taken the world of linguistics by storm. As a young ambitious missionary three decades ago, Dan, a red-bearded towering American, decamped to the Amazon rain forest to save indigenous souls. His assignment was to translate the book of Mark into the tongue of the Pirah, a people whose puzzling speech seemed unrelated to any other on Earth. What he learned during his time with the Pirah led him to question the very foundations of his own deep beliefs. As a 'born again' atheist, Dan divorced his devout Christian wife and became estranged from his children. Having lost faith and family, his new life is dominated by the desire to leave behind his legacy. Everett's most controversial claim is that the Pirah language lacks 'recursion' - the ability to build an infinite number of sentences.
- Release Date
25 January 2012
- DirectingRandall Wood
- Budget
$0.00
- Revenue
$0.00
- Stars
Videos
User Reviews
See moreMore Like This
Yeah You Rite!
This award winning film is a fast paced, humorous look at the colorful way the residents of New Orleans express themselves - why they talk the way...
See moreMarc Okrand on Klingon
Marc Okrand discusses his involvement with the Star Trek franchise and his work on inventing the Klingon and Vulcan languages.
See moreWe Will Speak
The Cherokee language is deeply tied to Cherokee identity; yet generations of assimilation efforts by the U.S. government and anti-Indigenous...
See moreThe Unanswered Question V : The Twentieth Century Crisis
This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew...
See moreThe Unanswered Question VI : The Poetry of Earth
This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew...
See moreK'anech'oxdekdiigh: I'm Not Going to Teach You
The collaboration between the Tanacross and Northway, Alaska communities and trained linguistic specialists from the Alaska Native Language Center...
See moreCodeSwitching
CodeSwitching is a mash-up of personal stories from three generations of African American students who participated in a landmark voluntary...
See moreDo I Sound Gay?
What makes a voice “gay”? A breakup with his boyfriend sets journalist David Thorpe on a quest to unravel a linguistic mystery.
See moreTo Save a Language
Linguist Indrek Park has been working with Native American languages for over ten years. The film sees him recording the language of the Mandan...
See moreThe Unanswered Question III : Musical Semantics
This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew...
See moreThe Unanswered Question IV : The Delights and Dangers of Ambiguity
This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew...
See moreThe Unanswered Question II : Musical Syntax
This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew...
See moreThe Unanswered Question I : Musical Phonology
This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew...
See moreProject Nim
From the team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to...
See moreNoam Chomsky: Knowledge and Power
An in-depth look at the work and views of the man described as 'one of the greatest minds in human history'. He first emerged through his...
See moreAt a Traffic Light
We all have a dream... Nelson's dream is to learn how to read. He works at a traffic light in Maputo selling car products to people who stop. Every...
See moreAmerican Tongues
Rich in humor and regional color, this sometimes hilarious film uses the prism of language to reveal our attitudes about the way other people speak...
See moreIs the Man Who Is Tall Happy?
A series of interviews featuring linguist, philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky done in hand-drawn animation.
See moreAnton Habovštiak - Oravským chodníčkom...
Mockingbird Don't Sing
The tragic true story of one of the worst cases of child abuse ever documented (in which a girl was locked in a room without social contact for...
See more