Eskimo words for snow
The claim that Eskimo words for snow (specifically Yupik and Inuit words) are unusually numerous is often used to support the linguistic-relativity hypothesis or "Whorfianism". That hypothesis, which posits that a language's vocabulary (among other features) shapes or defines its speakers' view of the world, is largely discredited, though a 2010 study supports the core notion that these languages have many more root words for "snow" than the English language. The original claim is based in the work of anthropologist Franz Boas and was particularly promoted by his contemporary, Benjamin Lee Whorf, whose name  is connected with the hypothesis. Overview. Franz Boas did not make quantitative claims but rather pointed out that the Eskimo–Aleut languages have about the same number of distinct word roots referring to snow as English does, but the structure of these languages tends to allow more variety as to how those roots can be modified in forming a single word. A good deal of the ongoing debate thus depends on how one defines "word", and perhaps even "word root". The first re-evaluation of the claim was by linguist Laura Martin in 1986, who traced the history of the  claim and argued that its prevalence had diverted attention from serious research into linguistic relativity. A subsequent influential and humorous, and polemical, essay by Geoff Pullum repeated Martin's critique, calling the process by which the so-called "myth" was created the "Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax". Pullum argued that the fact that the number of word roots for snow is about equally large in Eskimoan languages and English indicates that there exists no difference in the size of their respective vocabularies to define snow. Other specialists in the matter of Eskimoan languages and Eskimoan knowledge of snow and especially sea  ice argue against this notion and defend Boas's original fieldwork amongst the Inuit of Baffin Island. Languages in the Inuit and Yupik language groups add suffixes to words to express the same concepts expressed in English and many other languages by means of compound words, phrases, and even entire sentences. One can create a practically unlimited number of new words in the Eskimoan languages on any topic, not just snow, and these same concepts can be expressed in other languages using combinations of words. In general and especially in this case, it is not necessarily meaningful to compare the  number of words between languages that create words in different ways due to different grammatical structures. On the other hand, some anthropologists have argued that Boas, who lived among Baffin islanders and learnt their language, did in fact take account of the polysynthetic nature of Inuit language and included "only words representing meaningful distinctions" in his account. Studies of the Sami languages of Norway, Sweden and Finland, conclude that the languages have anywhere from 180 snow- and ice-related words and as many as 300 different words for types of snow, tracks in snow, and conditions of the use of  snow. Origins and significance. The first reference to Inuit having multiple words for snow is in the introduction to "Handbook of American Indian languages" (1911) by linguist and anthropologist Franz Boas. He says: The essential morphological question is why a language would say, for example, "lake", "river", and "brook" instead of something like "waterplace", "waterfast", and "waterslow". English has many snow-related words, but Boas's intent may have been to connect differences in culture with differences in language. Edward Sapir's and Benjamin Whorf's hypothesis of linguistic relativity holds that the language we speak both affects and reflects  our view of the world. This idea is also reflected in the concept behind general semantics. In a popular 1940 article on the subject, Whorf referred to Eskimo languages having several words for snow: Later writers, prominently Roger Brown in his "Words and things" and Carol Eastman in her "Aspects of Language and Culture", inflated the figure in sensationalized stories: by 1978, the number quoted had reached fifty, and on February 9, 1984, an unsigned editorial in "The New York Times" gave the number as one hundred. However, the linguist G. Pullum shows that Inuit and other related dialects do  not possess an extraordinarily large number of terms for snow. Inuit word roots. Three distinct word roots with the meaning "snow" are reconstructed for the Proto-Eskimo language: *"qaniɣ" 'falling snow', *"aniɣu" 'fallen snow', and *"apun" 'snow on the ground'. These three stems are found in all Inuit languages and dialects—except for West Greenlandic, which lacks *"aniɣu". The Alaskan and Siberian Yupik people (among others) however, are not Inuit peoples, nor are their languages Inuit or Inupiaq, but all are classifiable as Eskimos, lending further ambiguity to the "Eskimo Words for Snow" debate.