Conference thebay::joyoflex

716.0. "Snow words" by COOKIE::DEVINE (Bob Devine, CXN) Wed Aug 30 1989 22:34

    The following note from Usenet disputes the story about
    Eskimoes having many words for snow.  (Whether they have
    pies is apparently still under research ;-)
    
    If there are any skiers out in JoyOfLex-land, you will
    know such words as "powder", "Sierra cement", "crud",
    "crust", "packed powder", "hard packed", etc that are used
    to describe the skiing aspects of snow.
    
From: [email protected] (Bruce Jones)
Newsgroups: rec.skiing
Subject: Words for snow
Keywords: lexicographic help sought
Organization: U.C.S.D. Department of Communication

I recently came across an article that shows that the old notion
that Eskimos have 25 (or 50 or 100) words for snow is false.
According to the author G. K. Pullum of UC Santa Cruz, and the
research he cites done by anthropologist Laura Martin of Cleveland
State Univ., the Eskimos have four words for snow: aput, snow on the
ground; qana, falling snow; piqsirpoq, drifting snow; and qimuqsug,
a snow drift.  Pullum traces the development of the myth from the
work of Franz Boas through Benjamin Whorf and others, showing how
the numbers increased as time passed.

This puts me in a bit of a bind.  I teach an intro to communication
class where I have been spreading the myth as an example of how
different languages categorize the world differently for different
people.  If the Eskimos aren't going to hold up their side of the
argument then I need a new example.  I want to stick with snow so I
thought that I would find a new speech community to discuss --
skiers.  I know that skiers have more than four words for snow,
particularly if you throw in a few that are used by most of the rest
of the population -- words like sleet, slush, etc.

What words do you use to describe various snow conditions?  Send
them to me, along with a short, one line description, at this
account or at [email protected] and I will post a compiled snow
dictionary to this group so that we can all see and argue about
how many words skiers have for snow.

    This may very well degenerate into "what did that ski report really
    mean?"

    Excellent	-	The snow base is thick enough to cover up most
    			of the rocks.

    "Corn" snow - pebbles of ice on the slopes, probably from a
    broken up (or "groomed") ice covering on the snow. Or from rain
    that fell the day before and froze the snow into little ice balls
    overnight.

    If the snow example doesn't pan out, there's always the example of the
    numerous words in the French language for soup.
    
Lew Lasher

How to read the ski reports:

	Packed powder = anything that's white.

	Spring conditions = mud.

	Variable conditions = mud interspersed with blue ice.

	Loose frozen granular = man-made blue ice.

	Death cookies = those golfball sized ice balls left on the edge of the
	trail when loose frozen granular is groomed. 


Larry_who_has_skied_on_all_of_the_above

    
    	Pennsylvania Boilerplate = Ice crust on top of hard-packed snow
    
    	-- Glinch (who still remembers ringing his bell on it)

    Couldn't resist this, although some may insist
    itsnowpunatall.
    
    How's the snow?
    Snow Words than yesterday.
    
    (hee hee)