Fifty Words for Snow

 

It is a beautiful, peaceful, Sunday morning.  It snowed overnight.  The is a 3-4 inch blanket of pristine whiteness covering and hushing the landscape.  As it is only 13 degrees and given the way the snow wisps with each little gust of wind, I can tell the snow is powdery.  This made me think about the different kinds of snow be it wet snow, dry snow, icy sleety snow, powdery snow, fine snow as it is falling, big clumpy snow falls, and whatever else the atmosphere might serve up.  I remember an adage about Eskimos or indigenous peoples in Greenland having like fifty words for snow.

I am not sure when I first heard this.  But I clearly recall being impressed by hearing it and then trying to figure out if this were true and if it were true… why?  I did hear this well before the whole global warming a thing.  Winters were tougher and more brutal then.  Then I thought further back in time when Eskimos lived off the land which was frozen, icy, snowy, mostly night, for like half to two-thirds of the year.  Snow was definitely a significant part of their lives.  It makes total sense that they would have more words to explain the nuances of different types of snows and snowstorms. 

A century ago, on June 11, 1922, a silent film documentary called “Nanook of the North” was released.   You can watch it on YouTube.  It showed the rigors of Eskimo or Inuit life in the wilderness.  It was the first glimpse of a lifestyle most people were unfamiliar with.  There might have been scholarly, anthropological, works about the Inuits, but the documentary presented the Eskimo/Inuit way of life to the public.  This way of life was unchanged for centuries but was quickly fading away.   People were enamored with the documentary.  Nanook became a household name.  Whenever people were bundled up with scarves, coats, mittens, and furry hats to the point where only their eyes were showing, people would say, “You look like Nanook of the North.”  This was even referenced in the movie White Christmas by Danny Kaye. 

A New Yorker article from 2004, Nanook and Me, shows that the famed documentary was more staged than depicting real life.  The Inuits “had long since stopped walrus-hunting” and that important segment was staged.  Nanook and family built and igloo but as the dark and cramped interiors of these snow block shelters were not conducive to filming, a cutaway igloo (a set) was created to film those scenes.  Through the modern lens of over criticizing everything especially older works such as “Nanook of the North”, the director Robert Flaherty has been criticized for the scripted and staged parts of his groundbreaking documentary.  In his own words from The New Yorker, “What I want to show is the former majesty and character of these people, while it is still possible—before the white man has destroyed not only their character, but the people as well.”  I am giving Flaherty a little slack as his documentary was engaging and gave a reasonable glimpse into a fascinating past.

So, are there fifty Eskimo or Inuit words for snow?

Yes and no.  I found a paper, Counting Eskimo words for Snow:  A citizen’s guide, by Anthony C. Woodbury of the University of Texas at Austin.  As the author is a professor of linguistics, I will go with his take.  And his answer includes lexemes which is basically a set of related words compounded in meaning through inflection.  It seems like the Inuit language and dialects uses a dizzying array of inflections.

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.

Thanks for clearing that up, Professor.

He also taught me that the Eskimos or Inuits as they prefer to be called extended from parts of Alaska through Northern Canada all the way to parts of Greenland.

I will go out now and enjoy the Robert Rymanesque, lexemic, fresh fallen, wind wispy, and powdery snow.  I will bundle up like Nanook.  If I see any walruses, I will leave them be.