Language & Culture: Words, Snow, and Stereotypes

Author Disclosure

Ekaterina Vylomova and Terry Regier do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Rain Vocabulary Across Cultures

As an example, South Africa has a medium degree of rains, yet languages from this region, such as Nyanja, East Taa and Shona, have numerous rain-related words. This is most likely due to the fact that, unlike snow, rainfall is essential for human survival– which suggests individuals still discuss it in its lack.

The Inuit Snow Vocabulary Debate

We were particularly curious about evaluating the concept that Inuit languages have numerous words for snow. This infamous case has actually long been misshaped and overemphasized. It has actually also been rejected as the “excellent Eskimo vocabulary hoax”, with some specialists stating it merely isn’t real.

The ideas it lists for any kind of given language offer, at best, an unrefined reflection of the societies linked with that language.

As an example, the leading principles for Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German) include von (“of”), den (“the”) and und (“and”)– every one of which are unrevealing. We excluded similar words from other languages utilizing Wiktionary, however our approach did not strain these typical words for Plautdietsch.

Word Associations and Linguistic Insights

Some web links are unsurprising, such as German having several words connected to beer, or Fijian having several words for fish. The linguist Paul Zinsli wrote a whole publication on Swiss-German words related to hills.

qába, which describes the “ritual dropping of water or pee to bring rain”.

Also, the word counts reflect both dictionary interpretations and other components, such as example sentences. While our evaluation excluded words that are particularly likely to show up in example sentences (such as “woman” and “dad”), such words can have still influenced our outcomes to some extent.

Confirming the Inuit Snow Vocabulary

We were particularly interested in testing the concept that Inuit languages have lots of words for snow. Our results recommend the Inuit snow vocabulary is undoubtedly outstanding. Out of 616 languages, the language with the top rating for “snow” was Eastern Canadian Inuktitut. The other two Inuit languages in our data established (Western Canadian Inuktitut and North Alaskan Inupiatun) likewise achieved high ratings for “snow”.

We assembled an electronic dataset of 1574 bilingual thesaurus that translate between English and 616 various languages. Considering that a number of these dictionaries were still under copyright, we only had access to matters of just how commonly a particular word showed up in each thesaurus.

The top-scoring languages for “odor” consist of a collection of Nautical languages such as Marshallese, which has terms such as jatbo definition “smell of wet apparel”, meļļā meaning “scent of blood”, and aelel definition “scent of fish, sticking around handy, body, or utensils”.

Our results recommend the Inuit snow vocabulary is indeed phenomenal. Out of 616 languages, the language with the top rating for “snow” was Eastern Canadian Inuktitut. The various other two Inuit languages in our information established (Western Canadian Inuktitut and North Alaskan Inupiatun) additionally accomplished high ratings for “snow”.

Caution Against Stereotypes

Most notably, our results run the risk of continuing potentially hazardous stereotypes if trusted. So we advise care and respect while using the tool. The principles it notes for any type of given language give, at best, an unrefined reflection of the societies connected with that language.

One example of a concept we checked out was “equine”, for which the top-scoring languages consisted of French, German, Mongolian and kazakh. This means dictionaries in these languages had a fairly high variety of

Ekaterina Vylomova and Terry Regier do not benefit, speak with, very own shares in or get financing from any company or company that would certainly benefit from this article, and have actually disclosed no pertinent associations past their academic visit.