Over 100 words for snow?

[David Bowie]

From:    Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>

<snip>

> As Wilson is fond of saying, "One never knows, do one?"  When I was told the
> legend, the context was something like, "You think primitive people are
> primitive, don't you? Well, class, the Eskimo language has twenty different
> everyday words for kinds of snow.  Can we Americans even _distinguish_
> twenty different kinds of snow?!"

> Of course that was in liberal NYC, which, I take it, is not representative
> of the nation at large.

> Decades later I was shocked (exactly the opposite of "shocked - shocked!")
> to learn that people thought the factoid meant that "the Eskimo language"
> revealed its speakers as confused dullards who can't generalize to the
> obvious. I still think that interpretation is by far the less common.

> I kid you not.

I think it's more often used to generally say that people make more
distinctions among things that they are more familiar with, or that are
important to them.

In some of my classes this fallacy (wrong word) is guaranteed to come up
(Cross-Cultural Communication), others i make a point to bring it up
(Research Methods), because it's a beautiful example of perception bias.
I mean, even if we accept that there are xxx "Eskimo" words for snow,
what about English? Well, we only have "snow", right? Of course not--we
just only *perceive* that as all we have--with minimal prodding, we get
a decent list on the board:

->snow, flurry, blizzard, sleet (marginal), sneet (regional, i think),
slush, flake(s), powder (technical to skiers, but also regionally used
by the general population), avalanche, glacier, and so on.

Then i point out that any list of "Eskimo" words for snow probably
includes compound words, letting in words like snowball and snowstorm,
and they--or at least the ones paying attention--can see how the claim
comes crashing down.

(I almost put a metaphoric avalanche into that last sentence, but
thought better of it and put it in the list instead.)

--
David Bowie                               University of Central Florida
     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.

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