Have you heard that the Inuits have 100+ words for snow? (1 Viewer)

[Ahsoka]

It’s not wrong, but it’s probably not what you’re imagining. Thankfully I’m here to explain how they have so many

A lot of you are probably thinking things like “that’s crazy! In English we only have one word” but that’s not quite right. Inuit is a group of dialects, rather than one common dialect that has 100+ of those words. Additionally, many of those words come from the same root. So we would have a lot more than one word as well. Snow, snowed, snowing, snowstorm, snowdrift, snowbank, snowflake, flurry, flurries, blizzard, sleet, slush, graupel, grue, neve, firn, sposh, and onding. These are just a few examples, there are definitely way more. And I’m not saying that the Inuit people don’t have a lot of words for snow, they do because they have more of a need to describe the various types of snow than someone from Singapore who speaks Singlish (as an example). But I do think this can help put into perspective what it means to have 100+ words for snow. It’s not that every Inuit kid learns 100 ways to say plain snow, and that they use those interchangeably. Rather, they learn a lot of words for a lot of varieties of snow, and the ones they learn also differ from other Intuit children who speak different dialects. Looking at it like this, 100 words makes a lot more sense

 

[athenaaa]

I did know this. And it’s not just snow but other nature-related terms too

 

[snsd2beg]

The Inuit languages are more so a group of languages or dialects than just one universal form, so it's not too surprising. It also makes sense given their general environments, like you said

 

[catmom92]

Yes! Thank you 4 posting this! I'm Haudenosaunee Mohawk on my maternal grandmother's side and I hardly ever see ppl acknowledging that indigenous ppl exist in kpop spaces unless an idol is getting canceled.😭

 

[catmom92]

It’s not wrong, but it’s probably not what you’re imagining. Thankfully I’m here to explain how they have so many

A lot of you are probably thinking things like “that’s crazy! In English we only have one word” but that’s not quite right. Inuit is a group of dialects, rather than one common dialect that has 100+ of those words. Additionally, many of those words come from the same root. So we would have a lot more than one word as well. Snow, snowed, snowing, snowstorm, snowdrift, snowbank, snowflake, flurry, flurries, blizzard, sleet, slush, graupel, grue, neve, firn, sposh, and onding. These are just a few examples, there are definitely way more. And I’m not saying that the Inuit people don’t have a lot of words for snow, they do because they have more of a need to describe the various types of snow than someone from Singapore who speaks Singlish (as an example). But I do think this can help put into perspective what it means to have 100+ words for snow. It’s not that every Inuit kid learns 100 ways to say plain snow, and that they use those interchangeably. Rather, they learn a lot of words for a lot of varieties of snow, and the ones they learn also differ from other Intuit children who speak different dialects. Looking at it like this, 100 words makes a lot more sense

Also there's a whole episode of molly of denali about this!



Full ep

 

[Ahsoka]

The Inuit languages are more so a group of languages or dialects than just one universal form, so it's not too surprising. It also makes sense given their general environments, like you said

Yes, it’s definitely easier to have so many variations with a collection of dialects or languages. Same goes with English, Arabic, or Chinese languages as well. Of course they aren’t the only other examples, there’s many more. But it definitely is a difference when you compare them to more localized or standardized languages, though there can be ones with fewer dialects that have many variations depending on their own environment.