eskimo hoax

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T O P I C . . . C O M M E N T

The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax

Most l inguis t ics deparl lnents have an introduct ion-to- language course

in which s tudents other than l inguis t ics majors can be exposed to at

leas t someth ing of the myster ies of language and communica t ion :

s igning apes and dancing bees; wild chi ldren and la teral izat ion;

logographic wri t ing and the Roset ta Stone;

pit and spit;

Sir Wil l iam

Jones and Professor Henry Higgins; isoglosses and Grimm's Law;

Jabberwocky and colourless green ideas; and of course, without fa i l ,

the E skim os and their m ult iple words~for snow.

Few am ong us, I 'm sure, can say with cer ta inty that we never told an

awes t ruck sea of up turned sophomore faces about the mul t i tude of

snow descr iptors used by these lexical ly prof l igate hyperborean

nomads, about whom so l i t t le information is repeated so of ten to so

man y. Linguists have been just as act ive as school teachers or general

kno wle dge columnists in spreading the entrancing s tory. Wh at a pity

the s tory is unre dee me d piff le .

Anthropologis t Laura Mart in of Cleveland State Universi ty spent

some of her research t ime during the 1980s at tempting to s lay the

cons tan t ly changing , se r f - regenera t ing myth of Eskimo snow

terminology, l ike a Sigourney Weaver f ight ing alone against the

hideous space creature in the movie Alien (a xenom orph, they cal led i t

in the sequel

Aliens;

nice word). You m ay recall that the creature

seem ed to spr ing up every where once i t got loose on the spaceship, and

was very difficult to kill .

Mart in presented her paper a t the annual meet ings of the American

Anthropological Associat ion in Washington D.C. in December 1982,

and eventual ly (af ter a four-year s t ruggle during which bonehead

reviewers cu t a third of the paper , includ ing several interesting quotes)

she publ ished an abbreviated version of i t in the 'Research Reports '

sec t ion of AA A 's journa l (Mar t in 1986) . This ought to have been

enou gh for the news to ge t ou t.

But no, as far as widespread recognit ion is concerned, Mart in

labored in vain. Nev er does a m on th (or in a ll probabi l i ty a we ek) go

by without yet another publ icat ion of the famil iar c la im about the

wondrous r ichness of the Eskimo conceptua l scheme: lmndreds of

words for different grades and types of snow, a lexicographical winter

wonder land , the quin tessent ia l demonst ra t ion of how pr imi tive mind s

categorize the world so different ly from us.

Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7 1989) 275-281

© 1989 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.



276

T O P I C . .. C O M M E N T

And the a l leged lex ica l ex t ravagance of the Eskimos compor ts so

well with the m any other facets of their polysy nthet ic perversi ty:

rubbing noses; lending their wives to s t rangers; eat ing raw seal

b lubber ; th rowing grandm a out to be ea ten by polar bears; We are

prepared to bel ieve almost anything about such an unfamil iar and

pecul iar group, says Mart in , in a gent le rem inder of our buried racist

tendencies .

Th e ta le she te l ls is an em barrassing saga of scholar ly s loppiness and

popular eagerness to embrace exot ic fac ts about o ther people ' s

languages wi thout see ing the ev idence . The fact is tha t the myt h of the

mu lt iple words for snow is based on almost nothing at al l. I t is a kind

of acc identa l ly deve loped hoax perpe t ra ted by the an thropologica l

l inguis t ics com m un ity on i tself .

Th e or iginal source is Franz Boas ' introduct ion to The Handbook o f

Nor th Am erican Indians (1911). An d all Boa s says there, in the contex t

of a low -key and s l ight ly i ll -explained discussion of inde pend ent versus

derived term s for things in different languages, is that just as English

uses separate roots for a var iety of form s o f water ( l iquid, lake, r iver,

brook , ra in , dew, wave , foam) tha t might be formed by der iva t iona l

mo rpho logy f rom a s ing le root meaning 'water ' in some o ther

language, so Eskimo uses the apparent ly dis t inct roots aput ' s now on

the ground ' , qana ' f a l l ing snow' , piqs irpoq ' d r i f t ing snow' , and

qimuqsuq

' a sn ow drif t' . Boa s ' poin t is s imply that English expresses

these not ions by phrases involving the root snow but th ings could have

been otherwise, just as the wo rds for lake, r iver , e tc . could have b een

for m ed derivat ional ly or per iphrast ically on the root water.

But with the next twist in the s tory, the unleashing of the

xenomorphic fab le of Eskimo lex icography seems to have become

inevi tab le. What happen ed was tha t Benjam in Lee Whorf , Connec t icu t

f i re prevent ion inspector and weekend language-fancier , picked up

Bo as ' exam ple and used i t , vaguely, in his 1940 amateur l inguis t ics

ar t ic le 'Science and l inguist ics , ' which was publ ished in MIT's

promot iona l magaz ine Technology Review (Who rf was an a lumnus; he

had done his B.S. in chem ical engineering at MIT).

Our word snow would seem too inc lus ive to an Eskimo, our man

from the Hartford Fire Insurance Com pan y confident ly asser ts . With

an uncanny percept ion in to the hear t s and minds of the hardy Arc t ic

denizens ( the more uncanny s ince Eskimos were not a prominent

feature of Hartford 's social scene at the t ime) , he avers:

We have t h e s a m e w o r d f o r f a l l in g s n o w s n o w o n t h e g r o u n d s n o w p a c k e d h a r d l i ke

i c e s l u s h y s n o w w i n d - d r i v e n fl y i ng s n o w - - w h a t e v e r th e s i t u a ti o n m a y b e . T o a n

Eskimo,

t h i s a l l - in c l u s i v e w o r d w o u l d b e a l m o s t u n t h i n k a b l e ; h e w o u l d s a y t h a t f a l l in g

snow s lushy snow and so on a re sensuou s ly and ope ra t iona l ly d i f fe ren t d i f fe ren t



T H E G R E A T E S K I M O V O C A B U L A R Y H O A X

277

t h i n g s t o c o n t e n d w i t h ; h e u s e s d i f f e r e n t w o rd s f o r t h e m a n d f o r o t h e r k i n d s o f s n o w .

(Whor f 1940 ; in Ca r ro l l 1956 , 216 ) .

W horf ' s a r ticle was quoted and reprin ted in more subsequent books

than y ou co uld shak e a f lame-throw er at; the creature was already loose

and regenerat ing i tself al l over the ship.

Notice that Whorf 's s ta tement has i l l ic i t ly inf la ted Boas ' four terms

to at least seven (1: fa l l ing , 2: on the ground , 3: pack ed hard ,

4: s lushy , 5: f lying , 6 , 7 . . . . : and other kinds of snow ) . Notice

also that his claim s abo ut Englis h speakers are false; I recall the stuff in

quest ion being cal led

snow

when f luffy and white ,

slush

when par t ly

mel ted , sleet when fall ing in a half-melted state, and a blizzard w h e n

pel t ing dow n hard enoug h to ma ke dr iv ing dangerous . W hoff ' s remark

about h i s own speech communi ty i s no more re l iab le than h is g l ib

general izat ions about what things are sensuo usly and operat ional ly

different to the generic Eskim o.

But the lack o f l it t le things l ike ver is imil i tude and substant ia t ion are

not enou gh to s top a myth . Mar t in t racks the grea t Eskimo vocabulary

hoax thr ough successively more careless repet i tions and emb roiderings

in a num ber of popular books on language . Rog er Brow n 's

Words and

Things

(1958, 234-236) , a t t ribut ing the exam ple to W horf , provides an

early example of careless popular izat ion and perversion of the issue.

His numbers disagree with both Boas and Whoff (he says there are

three Eskimo words for snow , apparent ly get t ing this f rom f igure 10

in W ho ff 's paper; perhaps he only looked at the pictures) . 1

Af te r works l ike Brown 's have p icked up Wboff ' s second-hand

misreco l lect ion of Boas to generate third-hand acounts , we begin to get

fourth-hand accounts carelessly based on Brown. For exam ple, Ma rt in

notes that in Carol Eastrnan 's

spects of Language and Culture

(1975;

3rd pr int ing 1980) , the famil iar asser tion that Eskim o languages have

m an y words for snow is found only s ix l ines away from a direct quote

of Bro wn 's re fe rence to three words for snow.

But nev er mind: three, four , seven, wh o cares? I t ' s a bunch, r ight?

Once more popular sources s tar t to get hold of the example, a l l

constraints are removed: arbi t rary numbers are just made up as the

1 Mu rray (1987) has argued that Martin is too h arsh on some people, particularly Brown, w ho does

correctly s e e s o m e English speakers also differentiate their s n o w t e r m s (skiers talk of powder,

crust, and slush . But M arlin is surely correct in criticizing Brown for citing no data at all, and for

making points abo ut lexical structure, perception, and Zip f's Law th at are rendered nonse nse by

the actual nature of Eskimo word structure (his reference to length of a verbal

exp ress ion

providing an index of its frequency in speech fails to take account of the fact that even with a

s in g le root for sn ow, t h e numb er of actual word forms for snow in Eskimo will be effectively

infinite, and the frequency of each

on e ap p roximat e ly zero , b ecau se of t h e

polysynthetic

morphology).



78 TOPIC COMMENT

wri ter thinks appropriate for the readership. In Lanford W ilson 's 1978

play The Fifth of July i t i s f i f ty . From 1984 alone ( two years after

her 1982 presen ta t ion to the Amer ican Anthropologica l Assoc ia t ion

meet ing s on the sub jec t - - no t tha t mere annou ncem ent at a scholar ly

mee t ing could have be en expec ted to ch ange anyth ing) , Mar t in c i tes the

num ber of Esk imo snow te rms g iven as n ine ( in a t r iv i a

encyc lopedia , Ada ms 1984), one hund red ( in a New York Times

edi to r i a l on February 9), and two hundred ( in a Cleve land TV

w ea t he r fo recas0 .

By coincidence, I happened to not ice ,

the New York Times

re turned

to the topic f ou r years to the day af ter com mit t ing i t sel f to the f igure of

one hu ndred: on Feb ruary 9, 1988, on page 21, in the

Science Times

sect ion, a piece by Jane E. Br ody on laboratory research into sno wflake

form at ion began: The Esk imos have about four dozen words to

descr ibe snow and i ce , and Sam Colbeck know s why . The New York

Times America ' s c loses t approach to a se r ious newspaper o f record ,

had changed i t s pos i t ion on the snow-te rm count by over 50% wi th in

four years. And in the science sect ion. But hey : nine, forty-eigh t , a

hundr ed, two hundre d, wh o cares? I t ' s a bunch, r ight? On this topic ,

no source can be t rusted.

Peop le canno t be persuade d to shut up abou t it , e i ther. At tem pt ing to

slay the creature a t least in my local ity , I men t ioned M art in ' s wo rk in a

publ ic lecture in Santa Cruz in 1985, in the presence of a number of

facul ty , s tudents , and mem bers o f the general publ ic . I drove ho me the

point about scholar ly i rresponsibi l i ty to an at tent ive crowd, and

imagined I had put a t least a temporary hal t to careless ta lk about the

Eskim o mo rph em e s tock wi th in Santa Cruz County . But i t was no t to

be.

Wi th in the fo l lowing th ree months , two u ndergradua te s tudents ca me

to me to say that they had been told in c lass lectures about the

Eskimo's highly ramified snow vocabulary, one in pol i t ics , one in

psychology ; my son to ld me he had been fed the sam e fac to id in cl ass

at his junior high school ; and the assert ion turned up once again in a

fasc ina t ing fac ts co lumn in a Santa Cruz wee kly paper.

Am ong the man y depress ing th ings about th i s c redulous t ransmiss ion

and elaborat ion of a fa lse c la im is that even i f there were a large

num ber o f roo ts fo r d i f fe ren t snow types in some Arc t i c l anguage , t h i s

w ou l d not object ively, be intel lectual ly interest ing; i t would be a most

mu nda ne and unremarkable fac t.

Horsebreeders have var ious names for b reeds , s izes, and ages o f

horses; botanis ts have names for leaf shapes; inter ior decorators have

names for shades of mauve; p r in t e rs have many d i f fe ren t names for

di fferen t fonts (Caslon, Gara mon d, Helvet ica , Tim es Rom an, and so



THE GRE T ESKIMO VOC BUL RY HO X

79

on), natural ly enoug h. If these obvious t ruths of special izat ion are

supposed to be interest ing facts about language, thought , and cul ture ,

then I 'm sor ry , bu t inc lude me out.

Wo uld anyon e th ink of wr i t ing about pr in t ers the sam e k ind o f s lop

we f ind wri t ten about Eskimos in bad l inguist ics textbooks? Tak e a

random tex tbook l ike Paul Gaeng ' s ntroduction to the Principles of

Language (1971), with its ea rn est assert ion: It is quite obv ious that in

the cu l ture of the Es kim os . . . snow i s o f g rea t enoug h impor tance to

spl i t up the conceptual sphere that corresponds to one word and one

though t in Engl ish into several dis t inct c l as se s. . . (p. 137). Ima gine

reading: I t i s qui te obvious that in the culture of pr int er s . . , fonts are

of great enough importance to spl i t up the conceptual sphere that

cor responds to one word and one thought among non-pr in te rs in to

several dis t inct c la ss es . . . Ut ter ly boring, i f even t rue. Only the l ink

to those l egendary , p romiscuous , b lubber-gnawing hunters of the i ce-

packs could permi t something this t r i te to be presented to us for

contemplat ion.

And ac tua l ly , when you come to th ink of i t , Esk imos a ren ' t rea l ly

that l ikely to be interested in snow. Snow in the t radi t ional Eskim o

hunter ' s l ife must be a k ind of cons tan t ly assumed back ground, l i ke

sand on the beach . And eve n beach bums have only one word for sand .

But there you a re : t he more you th ink about the Eskimo vocabulary

hoax, the mo re s tupid i t gets .

The f ina l words of Laura Mar t in ' s pap er a re about her hope tha t we

can co me to see the Eskimo snow s tory as a cau t ionary t a le rem inding

us of the intel lectual protect ion to be found in the careful use of

sources, the clear presentat ion of evidence, and above al l , the constant

eva lua t ion of our assumpt ions. Am en to tha t. The preva lence of the

great Eskimo snow hoax i s test imony to fa l l ing s tandards in academia,

but a lso to a wider tendency (part icular ly in the Uni ted States , I 'm

afra id) toward fundam enta l ly an t i- in te l lec tua l gee-w hiz mod es of

discourse and increasing ignoran ce of scienti f ic thought .

This i s one more bat t le that l inguists must take up ( l ike convincing

people that there i s no need for a law to make Engl ish the off ic ia l

l anguage of Kansas , o r tha t e l ementary school s shouldn ' t spend t ime

trying to abol ish negated auxi l iary verbs) . So me t ime in the future , and

i t may be soon , you wi l l be to ld by someone tha t t he Eskimos have

ma ny o r dozens or scores or hundreds of words for snow. You, gent l e

reader, must dec ide here and n ow whether you a re go ing to l e t t hem ge t

aw ay wi th i t , or w heth er you are going to be t rue to yo ur posi t ion as an

Exper t On L anguage by ca l l ing them on i t.

The l as t t ime i t happened to me (o ther than through the medium of

print) w as in July 1988 at the Univer si ty of Cal i fo rnia ' s I rvine camp us,



280 TOP IC.. . COMMENT

wh ere I was a t t end ing the un ivers i ty s annua l Man age me nt Ins ti tu t e

(yes , desp i t e my t emperamenta l unsu i t ab i l i t y , I was sen t away for a

sum m er cou r se i n how t o be an adm i n i s tr a to r ; bu t enough o f m y

private pain) . No t just on e lecturer a t the Inst i tute but two o f them

som ehow (don t a sk m e h ow ) w orked t he Esk i m o log i ca l fa l s ehood i nt o

the i r t ed ious presen ta t ions on management psychology and

adm inist ra t ive problem -solving. The f i rs t t ime I a t tempted to de mu r

and was g la red a t by l ec turer and c l assmates a l ike ; t he second t ime ,

d i sc re t ion for once ge t t ing the upper hand over va lor , I j us t he ld my

face i n m y hands fo r a m i nu te , t hen qu ie t ly do se d m y b i nde r and c rep t

ou t o f the room.

Do n t be a cow ard l ike me. S tand up and te l l t he speaker thi s: C .W .

Schu l t z -Loren tzen s Dictionary of the West Greenlandic Eskimo

Language (1927) gives just two possibly releva nt roots: qanik m e a n i n g

sno w in the a ir o r snow flake , and

aput

m ean i ng snow on t he

groun d . Th en add tha t you would be in t e rest ed to know i f the speaker

can c i t e any more .

Thi s w i ll no t m ake you the most popular person in the room. I t wil l

have an e f fec t roughly comparab le to pour ing f i f ty ga l lons of th i ck

oatm eal into a harpsichord during a baroque reci ta l . But i t wi ll s t r ike a

blow for t ruth , responsibi li ty , and s tandards of ev idenc e in l inguist ics .

REFERENCES

Adams, Cecil: 1984, The Straight Dope: A Compendium of Human K nowledge, edited

and with an introduction b y Ed Zotti, Chicago Review Press, Chicago, Illinois.

Boas, Franz: 191 1, Introduction to

The Handbook o f North Am erican Indians, Vol. I,

Bureau o f American Ethnology Bulletin 40, Part 1, Smithsonian Institution,

Washington, D .C. Reprinted by Georgetown University Press, Washington D. C.

(c. 1963) and b y University o f Nebras ka Press, Lincoln, Nebra ska (1966).

Brown, Roger: 1958, Words an d Things, Free Press, New York.

Carroll, John B., ed.: 1956,

Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of

Benjamin Lee W horl, MIT

Press, Cam bridge, Massachusetts.

Eastman, Carol: 1975,

Aspects of Language and Culture,

Chandler, San Francisco,

California. 3rd printing, Chandler & Sharp, No vato , California, 1980.

Gaeng, Paul A.: 1971, Introduction to the Principles of Language, Harper & Row, New

York.

Martin, Laura: 1986, ' Esk im o words for snow : A case study in the genesis and dec ay

of an anthropological exam ple,'

American Anthropologist

88, 2 (June), 418 -423 .

Murray, Stephen O. 198 7, 'Snow ing canonical texts,'

American Anthropologist

89. 2

(June), 443-444.

Schultz-Lorentzen, C.W.: 1927, D tionary of the We st Greenlandic Eskimo Language,



THE GREAT ESKIMO VO CABULARY HOAX 28

Meddelser om GrOnland 69, Reitzels, Copenhagen.

Wh orl, Benjamin Lee: 1940, Science and linguistics,

Technology Review

(MIT) 42, 6

(April), 22 9- 23 1, 24 7- 24 8. Reprinted in Carroll, ed., 207 -219 .

Receive d 20 April 1989

Cowell College

University of California

Santa Cruz CA 95064

U.S.A.

GEOFFREY K. PULLUM

ote

The views expressed in TO PI C. .. COMM ENT are those of the author. They should

not be construed as representing either the editor or the publisher of NLLT

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