nine Eskimo words for snow

[flojo]

I Once read a novel (author I don't recall) "Simella's Sense of Snow" ( which was made into a movie) In which the setting was I believe Greenland. In It the author stated that the Eskimo has more then 300 words to describe snow but no word for just snow.

I am just wondering if that is true.
t/u flojo

[bibliophage]

Welcome to the SDMB, flojo.

When commenting on one of Cecil's online columns it is appreciated if you could provide a link to the same. Doing so can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, making sure to leave a blank space one either side of it. The URL for the column "What are the nine Eskimo words for snow?" is http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_297.html

Cecil wrote a followup column that is relevant: Are there nine Eskimo words for snow (revisited)? There are several words for different types of snow and I presume several to describe it, but it's not possible to pin down an exact number.

[bibliophage]

Originally Posted by flojo

the Eskimo has more then 300 words to describe snow but no word for just snow.

I think I misunderstood the question the first time. Are you asking if the language has a single term for snow in general, as opposed to specific terms for falling snow, snow on the ground, slushy snow, etc.? The Eskimos from northern Alaska to Greenland are Inuit. The Inuit speak any number of closely related languages (or dialects if you prefer). One of them is Inupiaq. This Inupiaq-English dictionary defines aniu as "any snow" and apun as "snow". There are in addition many specialized terms for powder snow, soft snow, sugar snow, crusty snow, etc.

[samclem]

Originally Posted by bibliophage

There are in addition many specialized terms for powder snow, soft snow, sugar snow, crusty snow, etc.

Do they have a word for "yellow" snow?

What? I was just asking.....

[Askance]

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.

I, for one, want to know how this important work has progressed, lo these 26 years.

[Askance]

Originally Posted by flojo

I Once read a novel (author I don't recall) "Simella's Sense of Snow" ( which was made into a movie)

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg.

[Hilarity N. Suze]

Originally Posted by Askance

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg.

In the US it came out as Smilla's Sense of Snow for some reason.

[naita]

Originally Posted by Hilarity N. Suze

In the US it came out as Smilla's Sense of Snow for some reason.

Admittedly I'm Norwegian, so my aim could be off, but I think that's a better translation of the title.

[Ben Drankin]

"... the Eskimo has more than 300 words to describe snow ..."
No! No! Ten Thousand times No! This is a self-regenerating myth which some authorities on Inuit and other Greenland languages have been trying to kill off since at least the 1980s. See "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language," by Geoffrey K. Pullum (1991, Univ. of Chicago Press). Pullum says it started out with far lower false numbers like 12 or 29 and grew to a published claim of 400 words for snow (and whether you wanted nouns or adjectives, they were in error). I can remember grad students in the 1970s passing along this "news" all starry-eyed about cultural psycholinguistics implications, but escalations in exaggerations have taken away all the charm of the myth and made it sound tedious. I wish I could see the movie you mentioned -- curious to see concept they underlined.

[mr. jp]

Dane here.
Yeah,"Sense of snow" is right.

[tinker001]

Originally Posted by mr. jp

Dane here.
Yeah,"Sense of snow" is right.

URL LINK http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_297.html

I note that Cecil claims not to know how many Eskimo words there are for snow. Well, the answer is no more than 4.

Its often said that Eskimos have 50, 100 or even 400 words for snow compared to English's one, but this is not so. In the first place, there is more than one English word for snow in its various states (ice, slush, crust, sleet, hail, snowflakes, powder etc).

Second, most Eskimo groups will admit to only 2 words equivalent to 'snow'. It seems that out of all of the languages of Eskimo groups, there are no more than 4 root-words for snow altogether.

Eskimo-Aleut tongues are agglutinative languages, in which the word 'word' itself is virtually meaningless. Adjectival and verbal bits are added in strings on to basic stems, so that many 'word-clumps' are more like our equivalent sentences. In Inupiaq, tikit-qaag-mina-it-ni-ga-a means 'he (A) said that he (B) would not be able to arrive first' (literally 'to arrive first be able would not said him he').

The number of basic word stems is relatively small but the number of ways of qualifying them is virtually unlimited. Inuit has more than 400 affixes (bits added at the end or in the middle of stems) but only one prefix. Thus, it has many 'derived words' as in the English 'anti-dis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism'.

Sometimes these appear to be unnecessarily complicated renderings of what is a simple concept in English. Nalunaar-asuar-ta-at ('that by which one communicates habitually in a hurry') is an 1880s Greenlandic coinage for 'telegraph'.

If you were looking beyond the 'words for snow' for something which really sets Eskimo-Aleut languages apart it is demonstrative pronouns.

English has only four (this, that, these and those). Eskimo-Aleut languages - notablyu Inupiaqa, Yupik and Aleut - have more than thirty such words. Each of the words for 'this' and 'that' can take eight different cases and there is a wealth of ways of expressing distance, direction, height, visibility and context in a single such demonstrative pronoun.

For example, in Aleut, hakan means 'that one high up there' (as in a bird in the air), qaakun is 'that one in there' (as in another room) and uman means 'this one unseen' (ie smelled, heard, felt).

[Askance]

Originally Posted by Askance

I, for one, want to know how this important work has progressed, lo these 26 years.

Tempus Fugit, Unca Cec. How's it coming along? You won't live forever, you know.

[bibliophage]

Originally Posted by The Perfect Master

I have not get it perfected yet

Maybe Cecil should concentrate on perfecting his English.

[Chronos]

So just how many words for snow does English have? Off the top of my head:

Snow
Flakes
White stuff
Drifts
Powder
Hardpack
Slush
Flurry
Blizzard
Glaze

That's ten right there, without even bringing in related concepts like "sleet" or "hail", nor using any etymologically-related terms like "snowfall", "snow showers", or "whiteout".

[Siam Sam]

There's a variation on that over here involving x number of words in Thai for "smile." It ain't true.