A hundred words for snow
I remember, long ago, it was widely believed that Eskimos had a dozen words for snow. No, it was even more, perhaps a hundred! They had a word for every different kind of snow there was, be it wet, soft, dry, new, or old. They had a word for snow in different shapes, such as drifts and ripples, words for the different-sized flakes, even. Because snow was such a large part of their world, you know.
Geoffery Pullum, linguistics professor at University of California, did his best to clear up the misunderstanding, explaining that Eskimos had an agglutinating language (where words “glue” together to form new words). Therefore, in their language “drifting snow” would be all one word. So, well, in a sense they had many words for snow, but they were no more profound than our many phrases for snow, like “dirtysnow” and “slushymess”.
What is interesting, though, is how many people ran with this legend when it first made the rounds. Why yes, of course, the Eskimos would have a hundred words for snow. They’d define it down to its most minute properties! Because it’s everywhere!
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for three years, and I’m waiting to see whether Angelenos have a dozen words for palm trees. So far, I haven’t heard a peep about them. There’s the fan-shaped type, the spiky type, the fuzzy type, the smooth type, the barky type… actually, I haven’t even heard anyone say anything along those lines either.
It is all too easy to believe in the exotica of others. Imagine how amused we’d be to find that Eskimos believe that in Los Angeles, we have a hundred words for palm trees. We don’t even have that many words for dippy starlets who get DUIs while running around with no panties on.
