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They have a few. Aput: Snow on the ground. Qana: Falling snow. Piqsirpoq: Drifting snow. Kaniq: Frost. Kanevvluk: Fine snow. Muruaneq: Soft deep snow. Nutaryuk
by ipaddr 1y ago
They have a few.
Aput: Snow on the ground.
Qana: Falling snow.
Piqsirpoq: Drifting snow.
Kaniq: Frost.
Kanevvluk: Fine snow.
Muruaneq: Soft deep snow.
Nutaryuk: Fresh snow.
Pirta: Blizzard.
Qengaruk: Snow bank.
- antihipocrat 1y agoNot arguing against the idea that the Inuit have many more words for snow. But in english their are many commonly understood equivalents. Even more if you're into the snow sport scene that may reach Inuit levels. Common words off the top of my head: Snow on the ground: Snowpack, hardpack, powder, crust, crud, piste Falling snow: snowing, sleet, blizzard, snowstorm. Drifting snow: snowdrift. Frost: frost. Modern scene lingo Pow, corduroy, granular, chunder, cornice etc
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoGraupel
- ted_dunning 1y agoDon't forget sastrugi. A climbing partner and I counted over 60 words for snow in (our idiosyncratic) English. So, I guess there Inuit, English speakers and mountaineers as three different populations.
- morsch 1y agoA linguistic sub group of English that literally immerses itself in snow also having many words for snow makes sense.
- janderson215 1y agoTo be fair to the Inuit language, they never rode groomers.
- vintermann 1y agoJust shows the futility of this approach. Yes, you can find words, but do you use them? Is that a filly to you, or is it really just a horse? An extreme example is the "it's called a zygyzgy of ptarmigans"-type alternative words for flocks of specific birds in English, which are basically made up and unused.
- ralfd 1y agoIf I ski and want to communicate to another skier the weather/piste: Yes
- vintermann 1y agoYes, but the point is, some use them, most don't. The existence of the words means that someone using the language cared enough about the difference to distinguish - but nothing about how few or many they were. Arguably the existence of niche words could even mean less, as in the flock words example, words that have more or less been invented as pure word games.
- tikhonj 1y agoThose grouping words are silly trivia, but if you want to see folks using lots of specialized snow-words casually, just hang out on the skiing subreddit :) (Well, maybe during the North American skiing season more than in late May.)
- leke 1y agoI think Finnish also has quite many.