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Q: How many words do the Eskimo have for snow?

A: Couple of weeks ago, someone named D.K. Holm in the Boston Phoenix came up
with the list, drawn from the Inupiat Eskimo Dictionary by Webster and
Zibell, and from Thibert's English-Eskimo Eskimo-English Dictionary.

The words may remind you of generated passwords.

<verbatim>
 Eskimo      English                 Eskimo       English
 ---------------------------------+----------------------------
 apun        snow                 ||  pukak        sugar snow
 apingaut    first snowfall       ||  pokaktok     salt-like snow
 aput        spread-out snow      ||  miulik       sleet
 kanik       frost                ||  massak       snow mixed with water
 kanigruak   frost on a           ||  auksalak     melting snow
             living surface       ||  aniuk        snow for melting
 ayak        snow on clothes      ||               into water
 kannik      snowflake            ||  akillukkak   soft snow
 nutagak     powder snow          ||  milik        very soft snow
 aniu        packed snow          ||  mitailak     soft snow covering an
 aniuvak     snowbank             ||               opening in an ice floe
 natigvik    snowdrift            ||  sillik       hard, crusty snow
 kimaugruk   snowdrift that       ||  kiksrukak    glazed snow in a thaw
             blocks something     ||  mauya        snow that can be
 perksertok  drifting snow        ||               broken through
 akelrorak   newly drifting snow  ||  katiksunik   light snow
 mavsa       snowdrift overhead   ||  katiksugnik  light snow deep enough
             and about to fall    ||               for walking
 kaiyuglak   rippled surface      ||  apuuak       snow patch
             of snow              ||  sisuuk       avalanche

				    <code>*</code>
</verbatim>

From LINGUIST


When Geoff Pullum's book, 'The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax,' came out, I
started getting quite a number of inquiries from journalists about "words
for 'snow' in Eskimo."  That motivated me to prepare the appended item.
Please feel free to pass it around.

Tony Woodbury

                                                                                                                                                           *

Counting Eskimo words for snow:
A citizen's guide
Lexemes referring to snow and snow-related notions in Steven A. Jacobson's
(1984) Yup'ik Eskimo dictionary[[#1]]

Anthony C. Woodbury
University of Texas at Austin
July 1991

This is a list of lexemes referring to snow and related notions in one
Eskimo language, Central Alaskan Yupik (or just Yup'ik Eskimo).  It is
spoken by about 13,000 people in the coast and river areas of Southwestern
Alaska from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay.  It is one of five Eskimo
languages.  (Of these five, probably the best-known is Inuit, spoken in a
series of well-differentiated dialects ranging from Northern Alaska, all
across the Canadian far north, and up to the coast of Greenland.  While the
term Inuit is preferred to Eskimo by many in Canada, the term is retained
here because (a) it properly refers to any Eskimo group, not only the
Inuit;  and (b) its use is widespread in Native communities in Alaska.)

This is a list of lexemes rather than of words.  Roughly, a lexeme can be
thought of as an independent vocabulary item or dictionary entry.  It's
different from a word since a lexeme can give rise to more than one
distinctly inflected word.  Thus English has a single lexeme ''speak'' which
gives rise to inflected forms like ''speaks'', ''spoke'', and ''spoken''.  It's
especially important to count lexemes rather than words when talking about
Eskimo languages.  That's because they are inflectionally so complicated
that each single noun lexeme may have about 280 distinct inflected forms,
while each verb lexeme may have over 1000====  Obviously, that would put the
====
number of snow words through the roof very quickly.

The list is organized according to lexeme '''meanings'''.  Perhaps somewhat
arbitrarily I have counted fifteen of them, placing within each of them
noun and/or verb lexemes having the same basic sense.  And perhaps even
more arbitrarily, I've grouped these fifteen meanings into four larger
sets.  But the most arbitrary decision of all is left to the discretion of
the reader-the decision of how to count the lexemes themselves.  Here are
some of the problems you face:

(a)     Are all fifteen lexeme meanings really 'snow'-meanings?  That is,
do words with these meanings really count for you as words for snow?[[#2]]

(b)     There are some synonyms present--alternative lexemes with the same
meaning, like garbage vs. trash in English.  Are you going to count them
separately, or together?

(c)     If you decided to count synonyms together, will you also count
together both of the members of noun-verb pairs having basically the same
meaning?  (The members are, technically speaking, separate lexemes since
partly idiosyncratic morphological changes mark the verbal forms, and must
therefore be listed separately in any truly informative dictionary, as
indeed Jacobson's dictionary does.)

(d)     Following Jacobson, I've specially labelled those lexemes that only
occur in a small subpart of the Central Alaskan Yupik-speaking region.  Are
you going to try to make counts for each separate dialect?  If yes, you
will wonder if you really have enough information to do so.  (You're not
alone in this-such information is difficult to compile, whether or not you
are a linguist, and also whether or not you are a native speaker of a
language.)[[#3]]

A. Snow particles

(1) Snowflake
<verbatim>
      qanuk 'snowflake'
      qanir- 'to snow'
      qanunge- 'to snow' [[[NUN]]
      qanugglir- 'to snow' [[[NUN]]
</verbatim>

(2) Frost
<verbatim>
      kaneq 'frost'
      kaner- 'be frosty/frost sth.'
</verbatim>

(3) Fine snow/rain particles
<verbatim>
      kanevvluk 'fine snow/rain particles
      kanevcir- to get fine snow/rain particles
</verbatim>

(4) Drifting particles
<verbatim>
      natquik 'drifting snow/etc'
      natqu(v)igte- 'for snow/etc. to drift along ground'
</verbatim>

(5) Clinging particles
<verbatim>
      nevluk 'clinging debris/
      nevlugte- 'have clinging debris/...'lint/snow/dirt...'
</verbatim>

B. Fallen snow

(6) Fallen snow on the ground
<verbatim>
      aniu [[[NS]] 'snow on ground'
      aniu- [[[NS]] 'get snow on ground'
      apun [[[NS]] 'snow on ground'
      qanikcaq 'snow on ground'
      qanikcir- 'get snow on ground'
</verbatim>

(7) Soft, deep fallen snow on the ground
<verbatim>
      muruaneq 'soft deep snow'
</verbatim>

(8) Crust on fallen snow
<verbatim>
      qetrar- [[[NSU]] 'for snow to crust'
      qerretrar- [[[NSU]] 'for snow to crust'
</verbatim>

(9) Fresh fallen snow on the ground
<verbatim>
      nutaryuk 'fresh snow' [[[HBC]]
</verbatim>

(10) Fallen snow floating on water
<verbatim>
      qanisqineq 'snow floating on water'
</verbatim>

C. Snow formations

(11) Snow bank
<verbatim>
      qengaruk 'snow bank' [[[Y, HBC]]
</verbatim>

(12) Snow block
<verbatim>
      utvak 'snow carved in block'
</verbatim>

(13) Snow cornice
<verbatim>
      navcaq [[[NSU]] 'snow cornice, snow (formation) about to collapse'
      navcite- 'get caught in an avalanche'
</verbatim>

D. Meterological events

(14) Blizzard, snowstorm
<verbatim>
      pirta 'blizzard, snowstorm'
      pircir- 'to blizzard'
      pirtuk 'blizzard, snowstorm'
</verbatim>

(15) Severe blizzard
<verbatim>
      cellallir-, cellarrlir- 'to snow heavily'
      pir(e)t(e)pag- 'to blizzard severely'
      pirrelvag- 'to blizzard severely'
</verbatim>

APPENDIX:  An unordered list of English snow lexemes

<verbatim>
 avalanche
 blizzard
 blowing snow
 dusting
 flurry
 frost
 hail
 hardpack
 ice lens
 igloo (Inuit iglu 'house')
 pingo (Inuit pingu(q) 'ice lens')
 powder
 sleet
 slushsnow
 snow bank
 snow cornice
 snow fort
 snow house
 snow man
 snow-mixed-with-rain?
 snowflake
 snowstorm
 others?
</verbatim>

FOOTNOTES

#[[1]].  Published by Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska,
Fairbanks.

#[[2]].  The indeterminacy and difficulty of this question is due to the fact
that words don't merely match pre-existing things in the world.  Rather,
they shape and encapsulate ideas about things--how they are categorized
(compare dog vs. canine), how we are interacting with them (compare sheep
vs. mutton), how the word functions grammatically (compare the noun cow vs.
the adjective bovine), and how we wish to represent our attitudes about
them (compare critter vs. varmint).  It was in connection with this point
that discussion of Eskimo words for snow first arose (in the writings of
two major 20th Century anthropological linguists, Franz Boas and Benjamin
Lee Whorf).  Unfortunately, their point has been pretty much missed by
those who insist on counting.

#[[3]].  Here are the dialect area abbreviations used:

<verbatim>
 NS      Norton Sound dialect
 NSU     Norton Sound, Unaliq subdialect
 HBC     Hooper Bay-Chevak
 Y       Yukon River area subdialect of General Central Alaskan Yupik dialect
 NUN     Nunivak
</verbatim>


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