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Why do Eskimos have a hundred different words for snow?

Eskimos – a broad term for people native to frigid subarctic regions in the United States, Canada, Greenland, and Russia – don’t speak five of them, none of which has a hundred words for snow. The myth of their ice-obsessed vocabulary comes from the way their languages work. Eskimos create larger words (and full sentences) out of smaller “root” words. Their languages have only a few root terms for snow, but to those small terms they add other words to create long one-word descriptions of the snow’s conditions and uses (“the snow is icy and dangerous,” for instance, or “this wet snow is excellent for making a snowman”). The structure of Eskimo language makes it seem like they have hundreds of words for everything, not just snow.

 

Picture Credit : Google

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