Not much snow for the Eskimo

Leo Dong -

You may have heard that there are numerous words for snow in the Eskimo language.[1] In reality, though, the Inuit and Yupik people only have three words for snow.[2] However, the Sámi people from the northern regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and parts of Russia do have three hundred words for snow.[3]

This whole debacle about the number of words in the Eskimo language for snow originates from a linguistic theory called "linguistic relativity", which tries to causally assert that languages influence worldview. [4] An example of this theory in culture is in the 2016 film Arrival. You can read my review of the book that inspired the film here.

  1. Kate Bush even had an album where she settled on fifty; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Words_for_Snow. ↩︎

  2. Although plenty of adjectives. ↩︎

  3. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240228-climate-change-is-altering-this-arctic-language. ↩︎

  4. At least in its original, "strong" version. The weak version is merely correlative and has some modern academic support. Read more about it on the wiki page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity. ↩︎