You may have read an article at one time or another that talked about the large number of words that the Eskimos have for snow. It probably said that this shows how important snow is to their culture. I recently read an essay by Geoffrey Pullum called The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax that deals with this topic. It turns out that these claims are based on shoddy research and a misunderstanding of languages. Inuit is a synthetic language (you can combine words to form new words). Since it is a synthetic language there is not really any limit to the number of words one can make about snow. Snow that fell last week could be a single word in Inuit as could snow that sounds crunchy when you walk on it. Using the reasoning that Pullum derides in his article, anything and everything is important to the Eskimos except maybe refrigerators.
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Comments
German is another synthetic language. As an example, geschwindigkeitsbeschränkung means speed limit.
Posted by: CJ Costello on Tuesday, October 11, 2005
This makes me wonder if the reason we call rubbing noses "eskimo kisses" also needs to be debunked.
Posted by: Jess on Wednesday, October 12, 2005
i would disagree. i happen to like nose rubbing. and i find it as intimate as kissing. whether its origin should be attributed to the eskimos is almost irrelevant.
Posted by: nose rubber on Wednesday, October 12, 2005
nose rubber, I suppose that means you are not very interested in linguistics - or to be more specific, etymology. I find this area fascinating...of course, I am also looking forward to reading a book about the history of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Posted by: CJ Costello on Wednesday, October 12, 2005
csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/snow.html
Here is a similar article...
Posted by: Jess on Wednesday, October 12, 2005
A cartoon poking fun at the idea that the number of words for something in a language tells you something about what that culture values. (By the way, almost all the words for snow in the cartoon were made up and came from here.)
Posted by: CJ Costello on Thursday, October 13, 2005
I love the dead whale in the background on that cartoon.
Posted by: Shannon on Thursday, October 13, 2005