One thousand words for snow
Feb. 8th, 2008 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kodalaiSo the old trope goes that some tribes of eskimoes have 26 (or more) words for snow. This is supposed to stand as proof that languages change to show what’s most important in people’s lives, and possibly to poke a certain amount of subtle fun at those silly arctic dwellers. There are quite a few issues with this. First off, what eskimoes? There are lots of different tribes of arctic-dwelling natives, each with their own culture and language. Second, I think Snopes may have proved that this isn’t even true in the first place.
Third, and most important, “twenty-six words for snow” is pretty misleading. Consider how many words we have for it in English. Would we call snow “rain?” Would we call hail “snow?” What about “sleet?” They’re all cold water falling out of the sky, aren’t they? No, we have different words for them because we recognize them as meteorologically distinct phenomenon. People who work in the field of meteorology no doubt have dozens more words I’ve never heard, nor particularly care about.
If the language changes to reflect the environment I think that Japanese, or perhaps just Toyama, would need different words for “snow that sticks” and “snow that doesn’t stick,” i.e, snow that melts as soon as it hits the ground. I seem to recall from my science classes that the making of snow is actually quite a complex meteorological phenomenon requiring delicate and specific conditions. This part of the atmosphere has to be below freezing, this part has to be above freezing, et cetera.
Well, it snows all the time in Toyama, but it rarely sticks. The ground is very rarely actually frozen when the snow comes down. I’ve talked about the sprinkler system that Toyama uses to clear the roads. It works because the ground isn’t frozen, and only so long as it isn’t frozen. And really the water just helps to speed along a process that happens anyway: 90% of the time, the snow melts as soon as it hits the ground. Or, if it accumulates for a little while, especially on colder surfaces like plants or cars or what have you, it melts as soon as the snow stops falling. The only snowdrifts I’ve seen outlast a snowfall here this winter, are places where snowplows have pushed it all together at the side of a parking lot.
In a weird way, I think that this is a uniquely Japanese mode of snow. It reminds me of the cherry blossoms. The Japanese find cherry blossoms beautiful not only because they are, but because they fall from the branches while still in bloom – dying at the peak of their youth and beauty – rather than withering on the branch.
So this snow that falls, very soft and gentle and heavy, gives a pure whiteness to the world and outlines every detail of the branches. It fills the sky with silent turbulence and softens the ugliness of the landscape. It is beautiful.
And when the snowfall is over, the snow silently melts, often dying even as it hits the ground. Snow here never has time to become trodden and dirty, slushy or filthy runoffs. It dies at the peak of its purity and beauty, like the cherry blossoms.
Third, and most important, “twenty-six words for snow” is pretty misleading. Consider how many words we have for it in English. Would we call snow “rain?” Would we call hail “snow?” What about “sleet?” They’re all cold water falling out of the sky, aren’t they? No, we have different words for them because we recognize them as meteorologically distinct phenomenon. People who work in the field of meteorology no doubt have dozens more words I’ve never heard, nor particularly care about.
If the language changes to reflect the environment I think that Japanese, or perhaps just Toyama, would need different words for “snow that sticks” and “snow that doesn’t stick,” i.e, snow that melts as soon as it hits the ground. I seem to recall from my science classes that the making of snow is actually quite a complex meteorological phenomenon requiring delicate and specific conditions. This part of the atmosphere has to be below freezing, this part has to be above freezing, et cetera.
Well, it snows all the time in Toyama, but it rarely sticks. The ground is very rarely actually frozen when the snow comes down. I’ve talked about the sprinkler system that Toyama uses to clear the roads. It works because the ground isn’t frozen, and only so long as it isn’t frozen. And really the water just helps to speed along a process that happens anyway: 90% of the time, the snow melts as soon as it hits the ground. Or, if it accumulates for a little while, especially on colder surfaces like plants or cars or what have you, it melts as soon as the snow stops falling. The only snowdrifts I’ve seen outlast a snowfall here this winter, are places where snowplows have pushed it all together at the side of a parking lot.
In a weird way, I think that this is a uniquely Japanese mode of snow. It reminds me of the cherry blossoms. The Japanese find cherry blossoms beautiful not only because they are, but because they fall from the branches while still in bloom – dying at the peak of their youth and beauty – rather than withering on the branch.
So this snow that falls, very soft and gentle and heavy, gives a pure whiteness to the world and outlines every detail of the branches. It fills the sky with silent turbulence and softens the ugliness of the landscape. It is beautiful.
And when the snowfall is over, the snow silently melts, often dying even as it hits the ground. Snow here never has time to become trodden and dirty, slushy or filthy runoffs. It dies at the peak of its purity and beauty, like the cherry blossoms.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 02:18 am (UTC)A lovely post, when you compared the purity of untrodden snow to cherry blossoms ^__^
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 02:52 am (UTC)People rarely invent words out of the blue; if you need to clarify your meaning of a word or modify a concept, it's more natural to do it by using other existing words and modifiers (storm, rainstorm, thunderstorm, snowstorm, hailstorm, stormy, storming). I can think of all sorts of reasons why a language might end up with multiple synonyms for a word--borrowing from prestige languages (clothes, dress, habit), having a mixed linguistic heritage (pig, hog, swine), counting archaic words along with contemporary words (cow, kine), counting words from multiple existing dialects (pop, soda, coke, pepsi), or occasionally a conceptual shift from a broad meaning to a specific one (corn, maize, cattle, cows)--but they're not all used by the same set of people at the same time, which is the implication of "Eskimos have 26 words for snow!"
That said, living languages DO tend to offer sufficient vocabulary to express subtle distinctions of meaning for important concepts--just not in the two-dozen plus range, and not to an absurd degree for a very simple idea. I would expect that most Eskimo speakers enough words to describe the actual weather conditions they live with--just as American English offers enough words to describe all the kinds of weather conditions you'd encounter in the U.S.
That was a very poetic post, by the way. You are clearly a fluent enough speaker of English to be able to clearly and expressively describe your environment using existing words! Also, I envy you for being somewhere the snow doesn't stick. Entirely too much of our snow sticks, even within Boston.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 03:45 am (UTC)I'm also thinking of all the terrible storms/tornadoes that ravaged the South last night -- trucks on the highway crumpled like candy wrappers, houses collapsing and trapping and killing people. It's quite the contrast.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 03:53 pm (UTC)