1 thousand words for reindeer?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Nov 28, 2004, at 5:14 AM, David Barnhart wrote:

> In a recent article in The Independent:
> "Climate change and unfamiliar species leave Inuit lost for words...

Geoff Pullum has savaged these reports in a recent Language Log posting:

GKP: Arctic folk at loss for words again:
 http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001665.html

> ...They have plenty of ways of describing their own wildlife - some
> have more
> than 1,000 words for reindeer...

the reports that geoff saw apparently didn't have this reference to the
ur-snowclone, "language L has [huge] N words for X".  since he's one of
the keepers of the "Eskimo words for snow" inventory, i've forwarded
the relevant ADS-L postings on to him.

people just make these things up, you know.

see geoff's "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax", especially the
reference to Ideas Too Good To Be False (with credit to john reed).

arnold