quote:Originally posted by Greybird: ... and, say, where IS Shady anyway?
Yeah! She signed up on August 4th, but has yet to post. I hope everything is okay with her. Now, I'm worried.
From: San Diego, CA | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Let's get Cecil Adams to put in his two bits.
What are the nine Eskimo words for snow? 16-Feb-1979
Dear Cecil:
In view of the blizzards we frequently have here in the Great White Midwest, how about a vocabulary lesson? I've heard the Eskimos have nine words for snow. What are they? --Karen, Chicago
Dear Karen:
I've got a lot more than nine words for snow, and I don't even need to resort to Eskimo. This is because I have a powerful descriptive vocabulary.
However, if we must confine ourselves to Eskimo talk, I can still come up with quite a few terms, as long as you will let me throw in some words for ice too: kaniktshaq, snow; qanik, falling snow; anijo, snow on the ground; hiko (tsiko in some dialects), ice; tsikut, large broken up masses of ice; hikuliaq, thin ice; quahak, new ice without snow; kanut, new ice with snow; pugtaq, drift ice; peqalujaq, old ice; manelaq, pack ice; ivuneq, high pack ice; maneraq, smooth ice; akuvijarjuak, thin ice on the sea; kuhugaq, icicle; nilak, fresh water ice; and tugartaq, firm winter ice.
If we wish to include peripheral items we may speak of iglo, snow house (igloo); haviujaq, snow knife; puatlrit, snow shovel; uvkuag, block of snow for closing the door of a snow hut. I imagine after-dinner chats in Eskimoland must get a bit monotonous after a while, considering the restricted range of subject matter. Fortunately, they have about 20 words for trout to liven things up with.
Most of the preceding words are from the dialect of the Umingmaktormiut, a tribe living in the eastern part of arctic America. Since the necessary diacritical marks are not available, the spellings are a little on the approximate side. However, Eskimos are not such hot spellers anyway.
The problem with trying to pin down exactly how many Eskimo words there for snow and/or ice--or for anything, for that matter-- is that Eskimo is what is called a "polysynthetic" language, which means you sort of make up words as you go along, by connecting various particles to your basic root word. For example, we may add the suffix -tluk, bad, to kaniktshaq, snow, and come up with kaniktshartluk, bad snow.
By means of this system we may manufacture words that would fracture the jaw of an elk. To illustrate I offer the word takusariartorumagaluarnerpa, a chewy mouthful signifying: "Do you think he really intends to go look after it?" It takes nerve to flog your way through a word of this magnitude. That's why Eskimos are so laconic--they are conserving their strength for their next foray into their godawful grammar.
In my spare time I have been attempting to construct an Eskimo sentence in my basement, such as will be suitable for the season. I have not get it perfected yet, but it is coming along pretty well, and with a little work it might pass for the genuine article. So far I have: kaniktshaq moritlkatsio atsuniartoq.
When completed, this sentence will proclaim: "Look at all this freaking snow." At present it means: "Observe the snow. It fornicates." This is not poetic, but it is serviceable, and I intend to employ it at the next opportunity. Anyone who feels it would alleviate his or her tension is invited to do likewise. Should it be felt that this is too burdensome a load of verbiage to be hauling around all the time, one may avail oneself of the timeless Eskimo interjection anaq, shit. This is appropriate to a wide variety of situations.
--CECIL ADAMS
Are there nine Eskimo words for snow (revisited)? 02-Feb-2001
Dear Cecil:
Just read the column on your Web site about the nine Eskimo words for snow, in which you encourage the idea that Eskimos have an unusually large number of terms for snow and ice. You'd better read the title essay in Geoffrey Pullum's book The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax (1991). --Stephanie Short, Lake Placid, New York
Dear Cecil:
I myself am a Koniag Eskimo and was inflamed to see your ignorant, rude, racist, and idiotic statements about a different race than yours posted on a Web site where people ask questions and want simply the answers, not to read a bunch of redneck crap from some ignorant person who doesn't take the time . . . --Marie G., via the Internet
Cecil replies:
Ah, jeez, Marie. Does this mean our date is off?
I confess that in my column on Eskimo words for snow I was--I know this will shatter the image many of you have of me--screwing around. I did not, for example, have a factual basis for the ignorant, rude, etc., statement that "Eskimos are not such hot spellers." On the evidence of Marie's letter their spelling is OK; it's their English composition skills that blow. (Different from. "Simply want answers," not "want simply the answers." Delete "to read." Divide run-on sentence.) Also, I cannot honestly state that Eskimos are laconic because "they're conserving their strength for their next foray into their godawful grammar." Apparently they can run off at the mouth just like anybody else.
Turning to Stephanie's point, I did not squarely address the question of whether the Eskimo/Inuit have an unusually large number of terms for snow or whether this tells us anything useful about the Eskimo worldview, the interdependence of language and cognition, or anything else. Geoffrey Pullum rectifies this omission in the essay cited, claiming that "the truth is that the Eskimos do not have lots of different words for snow" (his emphasis). In the course of this he lumps your columnist in with such tawdry enterprises as the New York Times for having collectively perpetuated popular ignorance on the topic.
Geoff and I need to have a little talk about this. Granted, the Times, under the incredible deadline pressure that editorial writers face, once declared that Eskimos have a hundred words for snow, which is not true in any meaningful sense. I, on the other hand, cited a couple dozen terms for snow, ice, and related subjects that I found in an Eskimo dictionary. I also pointed out that Eskimo languages are "polysynthetic," meaning one constructs new words on the fly by adding morphemes (of which there are hundreds) to a root; this makes it impossible to state definitively how many Eskimo words there are for anything. Geoff, having asked around, avows that there are maybe a dozen independent Eskimo roots for snow, which to my mind qualifies as "lots" and is certainly comparable to the numbers I was talking about in my column. (On further investigation, it turns out there are at least 15 roots; see list.) So my question to Geoff is: Where do you figure I screwed up?
Enough of this palaver. The facts appear to be as follows:
(1) Eskimo languages do indeed have a lot of words for snow.
(2) So does English. Consider snow, slush, sleet, hail, powder, hard pack, blizzard, flurries, flake, dusting, crust, avalanche, drift, frost, and iceberg, to name but a few. Admittedly I've included words that refer to ice rather than snow in the usual sense, but that's just my point. Once we realize that the thing being described is frozen water, it's obvious that English has terms out the wazoo.
(3) The allegedly large number of words Eskimos have for snow is widely adduced as evidence for what linguists call the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the gist of which is that language reflects a culture's preoccupations and in so doing imposes certain patterns of thought on individual members of that culture.
(4) Whatever may be said for the S-W hypothesis in general, the notion that it's supported by Eskimo words for snow is bunk.
(5) Any group of people working in a particular field or sharing a certain set of circumstances will develop a specialized vocabulary for describing their everyday experiences, and no doubt this tells us something about the shared mental constructs by which they comprehend the world. But you know what (and here I concur with Geoffrey Pullum)?
Hyperpath: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic | Subscribe To Topic
