The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Language
 eskimo words for snow




From: cindy@lise.unit.no (Cynthia Kandolf)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Eskimo Snow
Date: 27 May 94 20:31:39

Duncan Langford writes:
>I need to nail this one... for ages, from time to time people have told
>telling me Eskimos have fifty words for snow. I've been nodding, because I
>don't actually speak Eskimo, and I don't know any Eskimos living locally
>who I could ask. But, deep down, I didn't actually believe it.
>
>Is there some Eskimo-speaking person who can either tell me the 50 words
>(with translations), or confirm this is really an UL?

UL. It apparently started like this: Back in the early part of this century, there was an anthropologist named Franz Boas. Among other things, Boas made the claim that nonindustrial societies did not speak "primitive" languages, but languages that were every bit as complex as those of industrial societies. He once made a remark to the effect that Eskimos had four unrelated root words for snow.

Now, Boas' claim about language is an important tenet of modern linguistics, and one of his students, Edward Sapir, made important early contributions to the field. One of Sapir's students was Benjamin Lee Whorf (who was, by profession, a fire insurance inspector - his interest in languages was a hobby). Whorf went on to publish what he called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, claiming that a person's thoughts are shaped and limited by his native language. The hypothesis in its strictest form has long since been discredited (watered-down versions have been found to be true, but unremarkable), but certain of the "facts" Whorf used to back up his claim have obtained a life of their own. He took Boas' claim that there were four unrelated root words, increased it to seven, and implied that there might be more. In time, the claim has been increased to truly impressive numbers.

Reality is much more boring. As mentioned above, Boas found four unrelated roots. But the Eskimo languages are polysynthetic or "agglutinative" languages, meaning that words are formed by combining roots and affixes. Trying to nail down the number of "words" Eskimos have for snow is impossible. Furthermore, it is hardly surprising that Eskimos have four roots for snow - the ability to describe snow conditions is pretty important to someone living in the Artic.

I do actually intend to write up a better post about this (as well as the alleged lack of concept of time in the Hopi culture, another Whorfian UL), but don't have the time right now. Hope this will do for the time being.

-Cindy Kandolf, certified language mechanic cindy@lise.unit.no
Trondheim, Norway


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