Have you been slip-sliding your way to work for the past week or so, after shovelling the walk, the driveway, and the roadway (or paying someone to do it for you, either directly or through taxes)?
Has it prompted you to mutter some despicable epithets under your breath, adding to the long list of 鈥�50 different words Eskimos use鈥� to describe snow?
Sorry, but that list is a fake. A phony. A snow job.
First off, the 鈥淓skimos鈥� are actually a whole bunch of different Inuit and Yupic peoples anthropologically lumped together through a coincidence of geography and a misunderstanding of the actual cultural diversity that populates the coldest habitable climes on the planet (the slightly colder Antarctic is habitable only in a scientific, not a cultural context).
And here鈥檚 the shocker: they don鈥檛 have any more words to describe snow than do those of us in the rest of Canada.
Indeed, we have as many words here on the Wet Coast, where some that we use to describe snow include 鈥渞are,鈥� 鈥渦ncommon,鈥� 鈥渦gly,鈥� 鈥渟tupid,鈥� and a few others which you have been muttering under your breath since the white crap floated from the sky.
In fact, those of us whose primary tongue is English probably use more words to describe snow 鈥� especially when the snowplow comes by moments after you鈥檝e shovelled the previous load dumped into the end of your driveway.
You see, many so-called Eskimo-Aleut vocabularies initially confused Western anthropologists because they use suffixes (English example: 鈥渟now鈥� and 鈥渟nowing鈥�) and compound words (English example: 鈥渟nowplow鈥�) to economically define types of snow.
Some languages condense strings into single words where we might use a phrase (English example: 鈥渢he garbage the snowplow pushed into our driveway鈥�) or a sentence (English example: 鈥淗ere comes that stupid jerk with his godforsaken snowplow again.鈥�), or sometimes even more than one sentence (English example: 鈥淎w, for crying out loud! Does that guy ever stop? He turns that blade to push more into our driveway, and he goes by our house more times than anybody else鈥檚. If this was Trumpland, they wouldn鈥檛 convict me if I shot him. I ought to make him eat it.鈥�
Bottom line is, all languages have many words to describe snow 鈥� even if the people speaking them don鈥檛 know what it is.
Right now my personal favourite description is: 鈥淜ind of nice for Christmas.鈥�
