4 ms·

I think it's reasonably legit. By way of other languages as examples: - words for half-empty/full - Eskimo-Aleut has 50 (?) words for different forms of snow

by xarope 2y ago

I think it's reasonably legit. By way of other languages as examples: - words for half-empty/full - Eskimo-Aleut has 50 (?) words for different forms of snow - tonality adds complexity; mandarin (4 tones + neutral), cantonese (9? tones) - and various patois, not just in other languages, but also english (my exceedingly limited source being Graham Norton's youtube videos with the British/Scottish and Americans haha)

lolinder 2y ago
> Eskimo-Aleut has 50 (?) words for different forms of snow This one is actually a very good example of the problem that OP is describing of non-linguists writing linguistics pieces. The "50 words for snow" story is one of the first linguistics cautionary tales they'll teach you in a college linguistics course these days, on the same level as the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse is for engineering. The short of it is that it's based on a misunderstanding of the word "word". English is a very analytic language [0] on the scale of things, meaning it doesn't tend to augment its words to create new meanings. Instead we add adjectives and adverbs and prepositions to adjust a word's meaning. Inuit languages, meanwhile, are highly agglutinative [0], meaning instead of independent adjectives they attach morphemes (meaningful-chunks-of-speech, think prefixes and suffixes) to the word itself to alter its meaning. That's not really the same thing as having X words for Y, because the words are constructed from parts that have their own, independent meaning—these morphemes are essentially a set of adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions that happen to get attached to a word instead of just placed nearby. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language
- FabHK 2y ago
  The excellent Language Log blog has a whole series of articles about the "Eskimo words for snow" myth: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3497 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3497 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=37 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=37 https://snowclones.org/2007/05/31/if-eskimos-have-n-words-for-snow-x-have-y-words-for-z/ https://snowclones.org/2007/05/31/if-eskimos-have-n-words-fo... And a book: https://www.amazon.com/Eskimo-Vocabulary-Irreverent-Essays-Language/dp/0226685349 https://www.amazon.com/Eskimo-Vocabulary-Irreverent-Essays-L...

by xarope 2y ago

lolinder 2y ago

> Eskimo-Aleut has 50 (?) words for different forms of snow This one is actually a very good example of the problem that OP is describing of non-linguists writing linguistics pieces. The "50 words for snow" story is one of the first linguistics cautionary tales they'll teach you in a college linguistics course these days, on the same level as the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse is for engineering. The short of it is that it's based on a misunderstanding of the word "word". English is a very analytic language [0] on the scale of things, meaning it doesn't tend to augment its words to create new meanings. Instead we add adjectives and adverbs and prepositions to adjust a word's meaning. Inuit languages, meanwhile, are highly agglutinative [0], meaning instead of independent adjectives they attach morphemes (meaningful-chunks-of-speech, think prefixes and suffixes) to the word itself to alter its meaning. That's not really the same thing as having X words for Y, because the words are constructed from parts that have their own, independent meaning—these morphemes are essentially a set of adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions that happen to get attached to a word instead of just placed nearby. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language

FabHK 2y ago
The excellent Language Log blog has a whole series of articles about the "Eskimo words for snow" myth: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3497 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3497 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=37 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=37 https://snowclones.org/2007/05/31/if-eskimos-have-n-words-for-snow-x-have-y-words-for-z/ https://snowclones.org/2007/05/31/if-eskimos-have-n-words-fo... And a book: https://www.amazon.com/Eskimo-Vocabulary-Irreverent-Essays-Language/dp/0226685349 https://www.amazon.com/Eskimo-Vocabulary-Irreverent-Essays-L...