[Buddha-l] My favorite commonly believed falsehood

[Vaj]

On Jan 17, 2006, at 4:27 PM, Richard P. Hayes wrote:

> Mr Vriens's recent Inuktitut gaffe reminded me of something I have  
> heard
> for almost my whole life, namely, that the Eskimos have 427 (or
> substitute the large number of your choice) for snow. (Or maybe it was
> that they have 354 words for Eskimo Pie. I forget.) One time I  
> asked an
> anthropologist who had spent his life learning the language of the  
> Inuit
> (who used to be called Eskimos before people caught on that it hurts
> their feelings to be so designated.) The anthropologist told me  
> there is
> one word for snow in Inuktitut. (I recently confirmed this by  
> looking up
> the word "snow" in the on-line Inuktitut Dictionary
> (http://www.livingdictionary.com/). (For those of you who are not
> inclined to look it up for yourself, the Inuktitut word for snow is
> "aput". And the Inuktitut word for "Eskimo" is "Inuk". The dictionary
> has no entry for "Eskimo Pie".)

This is really rather old news, but for those who hadn't heard this  
before, check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow

Steve Feite
Bucksport, Maine

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