A real life story about a Christian missionary and linguist, 
Daniel Everett, studying a tribe called Pirahã living in Amazon rainforests.
Our missionary's goal is simple: learn and study the language of this primitive tribe in order to translate the Bible in their language. Him and other missionaries before him who have studied this tribe before all have failed in their attempts because there is an anomaly in this language. The Pirahã language does not have the properties of universal grammar - a set of principles all human languages naturally develop.
This language does not have words for abstract things, they don't have an origin story or gods; the spirits they believe in are tangible things found in nature such as the leopards and animals they see in the forest. They don't have words distant past and words of imagination are not a thing. The colors get their name from the fruits and substances around them, such as blood color. Their language also does not have words for future either. As a result, their life philosophy is very simple. They don't think about past or worry about future. They spend their days sleeping and eating, they also haven't developed any methods for preserving food for future. When they get plenty of food, they eat it immediately. No worries for future, so they still live a primitive life in this age.
Our missionary is baffled, how can he translate the Bible into a language that does not have any word or concepts for an abstract being such as God? How can he talk about the Christ and the distant past, 2000 years ago, the Bible was set in? How can he tell what an origin story is? What about creation? Daniel, struggles with his studies and cannot find a way to translate the Bible into Pirahã language. So, how can he promote his faith to this primitive tribe? Long story short, he couldn't. In fact, he came to the realization that everything in the Bible is a work of fiction and imagination and his God cannot be described or even be felt and experienced in nature. The reality is in "now" and in the material world these tribesman live in. In the end, Daniel ends up abandoning his faith. In his mission to convert the tribesman, he ends up abandoning his own.
A side note: The book has a lot of linguistic terms and explanations of the Pirahã language. If you are not interested in the mechanical workings of languages and have no knowledge about linguistics, you may get bored. This is a book we had to read in linguistics class for the finals.
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