My brother, for example, looked pityingly at me when I confessed my previous gullibility and said, with an air of infinite sorrow, that there are nine. A recent New Yorker, quite unprovoked, informed me that there are two. Suddenly, out of a hazy sense that there was something about snow, a clear-cut concept had emerged the Hoax that I could now talk about myself with some confidence, having learned what to call it. Its interest lay not so much in the actual facts of the case whether there were two words for snow, or nine, or nine hundred but in the very fact that people talk about it. Therein lies the crux of the matter, and not just the matter of the Eskimo hoax, but also the matter of studying languages.
Words are the most intimate artifact of culture.
Understanding them can illuminate other, unfamiliar lives in a way that nothing else can. Persian has different words for rugs that are woven and those that are knotted, for cooked and uncooked rice. But the cultural distinctions drawn in these cases are quite crude. The real insight gained through the experience of using a foreign language is, ironically, quite difficult to put into words. It goes beyond knowledge, to understanding which is surely the essence of education.