Hacker News Reader

Comment by asddubs | Hacker News Reader

From what I understand that 100 words for snow thing isn't really true, it's just that the language uses compound words like german, so it's just that an adjective + noun is rolled into one word (e.g. powder snow would also be pulverschnee in german, but it's really just the word for powder and snow without the space)

View on HN

More than you ever wanted to know:

The snow words myth: progress at last - https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/...

Bad science reporting again: the Eskimos are back - https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4419

"Words for snow" watch - https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3497

The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax - https://web.archive.org/web/20181203001555/http://users.utu....

"Eskimo Words for Snow: A Case Study in the Genesis and Decay of an Anthropological Example" - https://www.jstor.org/stable/677570

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow

As a brief aside, I think "Inuit" is the preferred term for people mistakenly called Eskimo.

As the first article linked to explains:

> the language family is generally called Eskimo or Eskimoan, because it includes the Yup'ik languages of Siberia and Alaska as well as the Inuit languages from the northeastern half of Alaska across Canada to Greenland

And I've heard Eskimo is a preferred collective term for North American indigenous arctic dwellers, because Inuit is just one tribe/ethnicity among a few!

So it goes.

Just think about it from the other direction.

To most Australian Aborigines, whites are called "Hollanders".

How much are you offended by that?

> How much are you offended by that?

Tremendously :P where I'm from "hollander" is a type of pipe fitting.

Well, you should have discovered Australia first then.

.. but I am thinking about if from the other direction.

From the perspective of the non-Inuit Eskimos.

Often people claim that Hungarian has over 50 words for "you" (https://dailymagyar.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05...)

But even the concept of what is a "word" in Hungarian is complex. Words have so many different forms depending on the context. As a Hungarian speaker, I perceive three forms of you (te, ön, maga) and one ending that is added to other words to to form a second person form of the word (-d), but even that is a complete oversimplification.

I don't think there is any reason why whale languages would have a concept of discreet words like we have in English.

Fun fact: That is why linguists are more interested in spoken language than written language. Written languages are ultimately "amateur" attempts to codify spoken (natural) languages. Spoken language consists of utterances not letters, words or sentences. Analyzing language requires grouping sounds into compounds that serve specific functions or carry specific semantics but for spoken language the structure will be a lot fuzzier and more complex than for the simplified written language even if the author attempts to replicate spoken language in writing. Even phonemes don't tell the full story.

A list of 65 English words/phrases for types of snow by a skier: https://skimo.co/words-for-snow but missing a few "spring snow", "Sierra cement".

Ok, so let’s say there are ten qualifiers and ten base words for snow. That makes 100 compound words.

It’s still substantially more snow-related vocabulary than in German, it seems to me.

Phrases, then.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com