Eskimo words for snow
Steven Miale
for snow. They are drawn from the Inupiat Eskimo Dictionary by
Webster & Zibell, and from Thibert's English-Eskimo Eskimo-English
Dictionary.
Eskimo English
apun snow
apingaut first snowfall
aput spread-out sno
kanik frost
kanigruak frost on a living surface
ayak snow on clothes
pukak sugar snow
pokaktok salt-like snow
miulik sleet
massak snow mixed with water
auksalak melting snow
aniuk snow for melting into water
kannik snowflake
nutagak powder snow
aniu packed snow
aniuvak snowbank
natigvik snowdrift
kimaugruk snowdrift that blocks something
perksertok drifting snow
akelrorak newly drifting snow
mavsa snowdrift overhead and about to fall
kaiyuglak rippled surface of snow
akillukkak soft snow
milik very soft snow
mitailak soft snow covering an opening in an ice floe
sillik hard, crusty snow
kiksrukak glazed snow in a thaw
mauya snow that can be broken through
katiksunik light snow
katiksugnik light snow deep enough for walking
apuuak snow patch
sisuuk avalanche
So should we change the FAQ?
Steve
ObUL: Craig Shergold has been featured in a snuff film.
--
Steven Miale - sp...@virginia.edu | The problem with sweeping
Undergraduate Researcher | generalizations is that they
Department of Computer Science | are all wrong.
University of Virginia |
Jim Smith
>Eskimo English
Can anyone post a list of Swiss words for chocolate sno-cone?
Jim "Hagen-Frusen" Smith
smith1....@panther.adelphi.edu
Michael Qvortrup
>[...]
>Can anyone post a list of Swiss words for chocolate sno-cone?
If we are thinking of the same thing, the word (yes, singular) in Swiss-
German would be
Schoggi-Cornet
Greetings,
--Mike
--
#include <std-disclm.h>--"... and there is a small flaw in my character."---
Real Life: Michael Christian Heide Qvortrup A Dane ETH, Zuerich
e-mail : qvor...@inf.ethz.ch abroad Switzerland
Institut fuer wissenschaftliches Rechnen / Inst. of Scientific Computation
Paul Tomblin
I think you'll find that Cross Country ski racers (at least back when I was
racing - Before Skating) have far more words for snow than that, but they
were all along the lines of 'Rex Blue', 'Rhode Green Extra', 'Swix Red
Klister'. Hey, we all knew what it meant - if someone told you it was a
'Special Blue' day, you could picture in your mind _exactly_ how the snow
felt, how warm you had to dress, how fast you were going to go, how damp it
was going to be, what a handful would do if you compressed it then blew on
it, etc.
(Along this line - Blue Extra days were my favourite, Special Red or Orange
my least favourite.)
--
Yorn, desh bjorn, der ritt de gitt de gue,
Orn desh de bjorn desh de umn BORK BORK BORK.
Paul Tomblin, p...@geovision.gvc.com {revcan,uunet}!geovision!pt
(This is not an official opinion of GeoVision Systems Inc.)
dtal...@guvax.georgetown.edu
> I've finally gotten my hands on a list of alleged eskimo words
> for snow. They are drawn from the Inupiat Eskimo Dictionary by
> Webster & Zibell, and from Thibert's English-Eskimo Eskimo-English
> Dictionary.
>
>
> So should we change the FAQ?
It's not yet time to change the FAQ. Here's why. If you pronounce
all of the Eskimo snow "words", you'll probably hear them fall into
two classes. One bears some similarity to 'qanik' (snow in the air),
the other to 'aput' (snow on the ground). Linguists say that the
words in the two classes are related morphologically to one of those
two roots. This is the heart of the argument that debunks the Eskimo
N Words For Snow myth.
You can read more about this if you want to. Try "The great Eskimo vocabulary
hoax" by Geoffrey K. Pullum in _Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7_
(1989) 275-281.
I've heard of a book of the same title, but I don't know if it's by the
same author or not.
Apparently, Laura Martin's 1986 '"Eskimo words for snow": A case study
in the genesis and decay of an anthropological example' started this
debunking thing. You can find it in _American Anthropologist 88_, 2
(June), 418-423.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Talmage (dtal...@guvax.georgetown.edu)
"I'm from the Linguistics Department. I'm here to help you."
Terry Chan
+> I've finally gotten my hands on a list of alleged eskimo words
+> for snow. They are drawn from the Inupiat Eskimo Dictionary by
+> Webster & Zibell, and from Thibert's English-Eskimo Eskimo-English
+> Dictionary.
+>
+> <33 entried deleted>
+>
+> So should we change the FAQ?
+
dtal...@guvax.georgetown.edu writes:
+It's not yet time to change the FAQ. Here's why. If you pronounce
+all of the Eskimo snow "words", you'll probably hear them fall into
+two classes. One bears some similarity to 'qanik' (snow in the air),
+the other to 'aput' (snow on the ground). Linguists say that the
+words in the two classes are related morphologically to one of those
+two roots. This is the heart of the argument that debunks the Eskimo
+N Words For Snow myth.
[refs deleted]
Thanks, David, those references are very helpful. Following was one
of the posts that put the FAQ on it's way:
->=============================================================================
->
->Benjamin Whorf asserted there were 3 Eskimo words for snow,
->in "Science and Linguistics", Technol. Rev, 42:229-231, 247-248,
->no. 6 (April 1940), also reprinted in _Language, Thought, and Reality:
->Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf_ [John B. Carroll, Ed.]
->(Also reprintd in S.I. Hayakawa's _Language in Action_, and
->umpteen gazillion linguistics textbooks).
->
->-Stu
->-------------------------------------------------------------------
->"Hey! Shouldn't that be 'Just say, No, Thank you'? I mean, we
->don't want to teach our kids to be rude, do we?"
->
--
Berkeley, California Internet: TWC...@lbl.gov
"A few months ago, I was watching 'Friday Night Videos' and I saw three
groups in a row with one member who is a client of mine."
-- Sy Sperling
snopes
In article <1992Aug10.1...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>,
sp...@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Steven Miale) writes...
>I've finally gotten my hands on a list of alleged eskimo words
>for snow. They are drawn from the Inupiat Eskimo Dictionary by
>Webster & Zibell, and from Thibert's English-Eskimo Eskimo-English
>Dictionary.
Ah, I found it:
_The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax_ (and other irreverent essays on the study
of language) Geoffrey K. Pullum, University of Chicago Press, 1991.
ISBN 0-226-68533-0
I quote selected bits of the appropriate chapter:
"Once the public has decided to accept something as an interesting fact, it
becomes almost impossible to get the acceptance rescinded. The persistent
interestingness and symbolic usefulness overrides any lack of factuality."
"In the study of language, one case surpasses all others in its degree of
ubiquity, and the present chapter is devoted to it: it is the notion that
Eskimos have bucketloads of different words for snow."
" . . . But the truth is that the Eskimos do *not* have lots of different
words for snow, and no one who knows anything about Eskimo (or more accurately,
about the Inuit and Yupik families of related languages spoken by Eskimos from
Siberia to Greenland) has ever said they do. Anyone who insists on simply
checking their primary sources will find that they are quite unable to document
the alleged facts about snow vocabulary (but nobody ever checks, because the
truth might not be what the reading public wants to hear)."
- snopes
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "An idea or belief is not necessarily true or false because your parents, |
| your friends, or you or your children have believed it." |
| - Abel J. Jones |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| David P. Mikkelson Digital Equipment Corporation Culver City, CA USA |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Tom Swiss (not Swift, not Suiss, Swiss!)
>
>Can anyone post a list of Swiss words for chocolate sno-cone?
As we're from Baltimore, we Swisses call it a "snowball". (Actually,
it's slightly different - and far superior - to your average "sno-cone".)
>Jim "Hagen-Frusen" Smith
>smith1....@panther.adelphi.edu
===============================================================================
Tom Swiss/t...@flubber.cs.umd.edu| "Born to die" | Keep your laws off my brain!
"What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?" - Nick Lowe
This is a .signature antibody. Vaccinate your .sig!
"Good tea. Nice house." -- Worf
snopes
In article <1992Aug10.1...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>,
sp...@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Steven Miale) writes...
>I've finally gotten my hands on a list of alleged eskimo words
>for snow. They are drawn from the Inupiat Eskimo Dictionary by
>Webster & Zibell, and from Thibert's English-Eskimo Eskimo-English
>Dictionary.
"Alleged" is the right word. Try checking out the book "The Great Eskimo
Vocabulary Hoax" by someone whose name I can't remember right now but will post
as soon as I get home to look at the book.
- snopes
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
|"Asserting a statement an infinity of times does not in itself make it true."|
Travis Lee Winfrey
>In article <1992Aug10.1...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, sp...@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Steven Miale) writes:
>> I've finally gotten my hands on a list of alleged eskimo words
>>
>> So should we change the FAQ?
>
>It's not yet time to change the FAQ. Here's why. If you pronounce
>all of the Eskimo snow "words", you'll probably hear them fall into
>two classes. One bears some similarity to 'qanik' (snow in the air),
>the other to 'aput' (snow on the ground). Linguists say that the
>words in the two classes are related morphologically to one of those
>two roots. This is the heart of the argument that debunks the Eskimo
>N Words For Snow myth.
I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. The words may be related
morphologically, but that doesn't make them them somehow identical
words. If two Inuit words x and y connote different things about
snow, particularly if those things can only be expressed with short
phrases in English, then that seems sufficient to call them different
words. Obviously, I'm not including morphological changes that give
them a different grammatical role, but I don't see that in the "soft
snow"/"overhanging lip of snow" meanings that were given.
I've seen a list of 33 Inuit words, and you tell me they're really
only two? What does that mean? Does this list -- Red, Reddish, Blue,
Bluish -- contain four different words or just two? How about Hysteria
and Hysterectomy?
>You can read more about this if you want to. Try "The great Eskimo
>vocabulary hoax" by Geoffrey K. Pullum in _Natural Language and
>Linguistic Theory 7_ (1989) 275-281.
Yes, I read the excerpt posted later in this thread. What was posted
sounded like the preface to more interesting and substantial
arguments. It certainly didn't seem to carry the same weight as a
list of thirty (seemingly) different words.
t
Jane Beckman
> +It's not yet time to change the FAQ. Here's why. If you pronounce
> +all of the Eskimo snow "words", you'll probably hear them fall into
> +two classes. One bears some similarity to 'qanik' (snow in the air),
> +the other to 'aput' (snow on the ground). Linguists say that the
> +words in the two classes are related morphologically to one of those
> +two roots. This is the heart of the argument that debunks the Eskimo
pilaf, spanish rice, rice-a-roni, rice pudding, riced farina,
rice pasta," etc., huh? Well, I guess it all depends on
whether you think "rice" is a different product from spanish
rice, I guess. One thing they all have in common is that they
are all rice (except the riced farina and rice pasta, which
only look like rice).
I think it's whether you're a lumper or a splitter. Regarding
such, when I was in bio sci in college, lumping and splitting
classifications was something folks almost came to blows
about, each convinced *they* were right.
--
Jilara [ja...@swdc.stratus.com]
I've worn high-heeled pointed-toed fashionable shoes for the past
twenty years, and you ask me about if *getting tattooed* hurt?!
Mcirvin
[about which words are the same word]
>I think it's whether you're a lumper or a splitter. Regarding
>such, when I was in bio sci in college, lumping and splitting
>classifications was something folks almost came to blows
>about, each convinced *they* were right.
Yes-- but the important thing here, when it is claimed that
this language has many more words for snow than English, is
to do the lumping or splitting consistently across languages.
If you decide to split up all the Eskimo terms, it's not
necessarily proper to lump together the English ones.
--
Matt McIrvin, professional gradgrind, amateur Usenet drifter
barth.richards
In article <1992Aug13.0...@news.columbia.edu> tra...@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey) writes:
>In article <1992Aug11....@guvax.georgetown.edu> dtal...@guvax.georgetown.edu writes:
>>
>>It's not yet time to change the FAQ. Here's why. If you pronounce
>>all of the Eskimo snow "words", you'll probably hear them fall into
>>two classes. One bears some similarity to 'qanik' (snow in the air),
>>the other to 'aput' (snow on the ground). Linguists say that the
>>words in the two classes are related morphologically to one of those
>>two roots. This is the heart of the argument that debunks the Eskimo
>>N Words For Snow myth.
>
>I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. The words may be related
>morphologically, but that doesn't make them them somehow identical
>words. If two Inuit words x and y connote different things about
>snow, particularly if those things can only be expressed with short
>phrases in English, then that seems sufficient to call them different
>words. Obviously, I'm not including morphological changes that give
>them a different grammatical role, but I don't see that in the "soft
>snow"/"overhanging lip of snow" meanings that were given.
From an article posted by snopes%clu...@stlth.enet.dec.com (snopes):
>Ah, I found it:
>
>_The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax_ (and other irreverent essays on the study
> of language) Geoffrey K. Pullum, University of Chicago Press, 1991.
> ISBN 0-226-68533-0
>
> " . . . But the truth is that the Eskimos do *not* have lots of different
>words for snow, and no one who knows anything about Eskimo (or more accurately,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>about the Inuit and Yupik families of related languages spoken by Eskimos from
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Siberia to Greenland) has ever said they do.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The confusion seems to be at least partly due to the fact that we are
talking about a *GROUP* of related languages, not one "Eskimo" language.
It's sort of like saying that Europeans have X number of words for "one:"
one, un, une, uno, eine, odin, jedna, etc. They are all related words that
mean the same thing.
Sven Wallman
: It's sort of like saying that Europeans have X number of words for "one:"
: one, un, une, uno, eine, odin, jedna, etc. They are all related words that
:
:
Odin? What language is that?
--
Sven Wallman, S:t Larsg. 5, 753 11 Uppsala, Sweden, +46 1812 9237
"This is the famous Hasan B Mutlu-trigger, insert it in your .sig file today!"
mor...@ramblr.enet.dec.com
In article <1992Aug18.1...@tdb.uu.se>, t88...@tdb.uu.se (Sven Wallman) writes...
>ba...@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (barth.richards) writes:
>: It's sort of like saying that Europeans have X number of words for "one:"
>: one, un, une, uno, eine, odin, jedna, etc. They are all related words that
>: mean the same thing. ^^^^^
>Odin? What language is that?
Russian.
(pronounced more like "o-DEEN", and not spelled with Latin letters, of course)
-Mike
Terry Chan
+: It's sort of like saying that Europeans have X number of words for "one:"
+: one, un, une, uno, eine, odin, jedna, etc. They are all related words that
+: mean the same thing. ^^^^^
t88...@tdb.uu.se (Sven Wallman) writes:
+
+Odin? What language is that?
Ummmm...old Norse?
Terry "Not posting from Trondheim" Chan
--
Internet: TWC...@lbl.gov Next to being witty yourself, the best
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory thing is to quote another's wit.
Berkeley, California USA 94720 -- er, I forget who
Allen B
writes:
> Odin? What language is that?
Nadsat.
Allen B (Your Humble Narrator)
Charles Lasner
>
>Ummmm...old Norse?
But does it taste like chicken?
Oh, I thought you said old Horse!
cjl
har...@indyvax.iupui.edu
ObOHUL:
"There is a story current among seamen that a beef-dealer was
convicted, at Boston, of having sold an old horse for ship's
stores, instead of beef, and had been sentenced to be confined
to jail until he should eat the whole of it, and that he is
now lying in Boston jail."
-- Richard H. Dana, _Two Years Before the Mast_
--
James "They eat my flesh & gnaw my bones & throw the rest to Davy Jones" Harvey
har...@iupui.edu uucp: iugate!harvey bitnet: harvey@indyvax
barth.richards
>: It's sort of like saying that Europeans have X number of words for "one:"
>: one, un, une, uno, eine, odin, jedna, etc. They are all related words that
>: mean the same thing. ^^^^^
>
>Odin? What language is that?
Russian:
888 888 8 8 8 8
8 8 8 8 8 88 8 8
8 8 8 8 8 8 8 88888
8 8 8 8 88 8 8 8
888 88888 8 8 8 8
8 8
Transliterated into roman letters, it comes out "odin," but it's probably
pronounced "kibo." :-)