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Inuit Snow Terms: How Many and What does it Mean?
Lawrence D. Kaplan*
Abstract: That Inuit languages have extensive terminology to describe different
types of snow was long held as a commonplace of linguistic anthropology since it
was first brought up by Boas in 1911. This often repeated proposition was meant to
illustrate how the physical adaptation of a people to its environment could be
reflected linguistically. More recently, others have reexamined it and sought to
expose it as groundless, claiming that these languages do not have a larger index of
snow terms than many other languages. The issue is linguistically complex and
extends far beyond making a simple count. This paper intends to add information
based on Inuit linguistics to this long-standing discussion.
Keywords: Inupiaq, snow terms, linguistics.
***
The claim that Eskimo1 languages have numerous words for "snow" has often been
repeated and has become familiar to the general public in addition to linguists and
anthropologists. The point to be made seems to be that "Eskimo" has some indeterminate
number of words -- and the numbers given vary in different sources -- for a substance
which is described in English and most non-Eskimo languages with a much smaller
number of words. The existence of snow terms in Eskimo is most often used to show the
relationship between the vocabulary of a language and the physical environment in which
that language is used. For some reason it is always the Eskimo example that is brought
out to illustrate this situation and not the fact that painters may use a wide array of color
terms and carpenters know a lot of words pertaining to nails and other hardware. The
Eskimo example has entered the realm of popular mythology, having turned into a
scholarly equivalent of the urban legend about the poodle in the microwave: everyone is
familiar with the story but the exact details are a little sketchy.
Two publications have refocused attention on the snow example. Linguist Geoffrey
Pullum in 1991 published The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax but first, in 1986, Laura
Martin, Professor of Anthropology at Cleveland State University published a report in the
American Anthropologist entitled "Eskimo Words for Snow: a Case Study in the Genesis
and Decay of an Anthropological Example." This interesting article follows the example
from the original claim made by Boas in the Introduction to the Handbook of American
Indian Languages published in 1911 through its many mutations and transmogrifications
*
1
Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
In spite of the controversy surrounding the term Eskimo, I use it because the snow example is almost
always attributed to "the Eskimo language," undifferentiated as to which of the six languages and
numerous dialects is intended.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND IPSSAS SEMINAR, Iqaluit, Nunavut, 2003
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LAWRENCE D. KAPLAN
as it has been repeated and often amplified in various articles and books and all without
reference to primary sources of information. The numerous published dictionaries of
Eskimo languages were not consulted and neither were linguists or Inuit. A brief
summation of the history of the snow example based on Martin's article follows, showing
how the example progressed and took on a life of its own, divorced from any empirical
data to support it.
When Boas in 1911 first presented his Eskimo snow terms, it was not in the section
of the introduction called "Influence of Environment on Language" as one might suppose
but rather in a less enlightening section called "Limitation on the Number of Phonetic
Groups Expressing Ideas." The point of the discussion is to show that languages classify
things very differently, "that the groups of ideas expressed by specific phonetic groups
show very material differences in different languages, and do not conform by any means
to the same principles of classification." Boas gives the example of English, where water
in various states is denoted by independent, unrelated words, such as lake, river, brook,
rain, dew, etc., although another language might conceivably express them by means of
derivations from one term. Boas next gives an example comparing snow terms in
"Eskimo" to English with its water terms. He gives four "words," aput 'snow on the
ground,' qana 'falling snow,' piqsiqsuq 'drifting snow,' and qimuqsuq 'snowdrift.'
These forms appear to come from a variety of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, but the source
is not given.2 Boas goes on to say that the same language has a variety of terms for seals.
This passing reference to Eskimo and the fairly modest claim which it is intended to
support are rarely remembered when the snow example is brought up. It is however
closely associated with Benjamin Whorf, who in a 1940 article used the example of
Eskimo to contrast with English:
"We [English speakers] have the same word for falling snow, snow on the ground,
snow hard packed like ice, slushy snow, wind-driven snow --whatever the situation may
be. To an Eskimo, this all-inclusive word would be almost unthinkable..." (Whorf 1940;
in Carroll 1956: 216)
Whorf does not cite Boas and does not give specific data, but he clearly suggests
that Eskimo languages have five or more snow words. The example is taken up again in
two textbooks published in the late 1950's, The Silent Language by Edward Hall and
Words and Things by Roger Brown and the example is mishandled again, with no serious
attention paid to the linguistic data. Carol Eastman continues the tradition of carelessness
in her book Aspects of Language and Culture, basing a discussion of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis on the snow example, quoting Brown saying that Eskimo has three words for
snow and also asserting that "Eskimo languages have many words for snow."
2
Boas’s qana is probably qannik or qanik, piqsirpoq is a verb meaning “there is a snowstorm,” and
dialect information would be needed to assess the word for ‘snowdrift’ which appears to be equivalent
to qimugyuk in Caribou Eskimo, for example.
INUIT SNOW TERMS: HOW MANY AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
251
The snow example has also found its way into the press. A number of articles in
Time Magazine, the New York Times, and elsewhere refer to the quantity of words for
snow in Eskimo languages and often pull numbers out of thin air, nine in one case, one
hundred in another. As a result of this wide discussion, the snow example is widely
known and referred to. Amazingly, it has come to be accepted as a commonplace of
linguistics and anthropology. Shockingly, it has achieved this status without the benefit of
reference to linguistic facts but based on the assumption that these facts must be found
someplace, all despite the existence of published sources of Eskimo lexicon that have
been accessible for decades.
Given how widespread the snow example has become, it is surprising that it
escaped scrutiny for so long. Not until Pullum published his humorous essay "The Great
Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax" in the book of the same name was there anything in print
giving the view of a specialist on Eskimo languages, since Pullum reports information
from the linguist Anthony Woodbury in an appendix. With the exception of Pullum’s
appendix, Eskimo linguists have ignored this subject, probably seeing it as unworthy of
any serious attention. It would be something like an anthropologist writing about whether
Eskimos rub noses. But because the example is so widely known and because it has been
written about by both linguists and anthropologists, it seems worthwhile to add a
perspective informed by Eskimo linguistics.
Martin's article does a fine job of tracking the snow example through its many
incarnations, showing how it has been misrepresented and misused. She points out that
Eskimo is not a single language, as it seems to be presented by those who have discussed
the snow example. She further stresses that the polysynthetic morphology of Eskimo
languages renders a discussion of "words" as such almost pointless, since the number of
words in these languages is practically infinite due to highly productive patterns of
suffixation. It is therefore necessary to establish what would be considered a word in the
languages in question, and apparently it must also be decided what is to be considered a
"snow term," since Martin and some others see this as part of the issue.
It is correct that Eskimo words are theoretically infinite in number, so that what is
phonologically a single word is most often not a lexicalization but a longer combination
of elements generated as part of the speech process and not found anywhere in the mental
lexicon, much like sentences in more analytic languages like English. These strings of
morphemes combined by productive processes can therefore not be considered lexemes;
Eskimo dictionaries list word stems that are then subject to inflection or derivation
through suffixation. Most noun stems, e.g. afun ‘man’ or abnaq ‘woman,’ are also full
"words" in the sense that they may stand alone without any affix. Verb stems on the other
hand cannot stand alone and require at least an inflection, although it is usually
convenient to cite them in stem form. So katak- ‘fall’ must be inflected to be used in
speech, e.g. kataktuq ‘it fell’ or katakkaa ‘s/he dropped it.’ It can also take adverbialtype suffixes, e.g. katagniabaa ‘s/he will drop it.’
Treatment of actual data is ancillary to Martin's primary purpose of demonstrating
the careless handling which the snow example has received, and almost as an
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afterthought, data are given in a footnote which explains what Schultz-Lorentzen’s
Dictionary of the West Greenlandic Eskimo Language gives in the way of snow terms.
She reports that "There seems no reason to posit more than two distinct roots (her italics)
that can properly be said to refer to snow itself (and not for example, to drifts, ice, storms,
or moisture) in any Eskimo language. In West Greenlandic, these roots are qanik ‘snow
in the air; snowflake’ and aput ‘snow (on the ground). Other varieties have cognate
forms. Thus, Eskimo has about as much differentiation as English does for ‘snow’ at the
monolexemic level: snow and flake."
A small flaw in her otherwise fine article, Martin does not handle the data
particularly well, taking snow terms in West Greenlandic to be representative of those
found in all Eskimo languages. The Comparative Eskimo Dictionary3 lists three
reconstructed Proto Eskimo noun stems which would fit her criterion of referring to
"snow itself" and not to other related atmospheric phenomena: *qanig ‘falling snow’,
*anigu 'fallen snow', and *apun 'snow on the ground' are the three basic roots found in
all Eskimo languages and dialects, except, unfortunately, West Greenlandic which lacks
*anigu whose Inuit reflex is aniu.4 Another problem between Martin's equation of the
two West Greenlandic stems meaning 'snow' with two English words is the inclusion of
'flake' as a basic English snow term. While 'flake' often refers to snow, it is generally used
in conjuction with the word 'snow' in the compound 'snowflake' or the phrase 'flake of
snow'. It may also be used with a variety of other meanings unrelated to snow, e.g. flake
of paint, of dandruff, etc. I find no historical evidence that 'flake' originated as a snow
term either, although it seems to have related to ice; it is of Scandinavian origin and may
have meant 'disk' or 'floe'. If we disqualify 'flake' that leaves 'snow' as the solitary English
snow word (by Martin's criteria), and Eskimo languages with three times that many!
In his essay "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax" Geoffrey Pullum writes very
entertainingly about the snow words example, citing Martin’s paper and poking fun at the
scholars who have slavishly repeated the claim promulgated by other scholars with no
reference to primary data. Pullum is not above overstating the case just a bit: "The truth is
that the Eskimos do not have lots of different words for snow, and no one who knows
anything about Eskimo has ever said they do." (This second part of his statement is
certainly true, since those familiar with the actual data have kept fairly silent.) "Anyone
who insists on simply checking their primary sources will find that they are quite unable
to document the alleged facts about snow vocabulary (but nobody ever checks, because
the truth might not be what the reading public wants to hear.)" A minor quibble with
Pullum is that he calls the bungling treatment of the snow example a hoax, even though
there was never really any intention to deceive. In an appendix entitled "Yes, but how
many really?" Pullum is to be applauded for taking the radical step of consulting a bona
3
4
The Comparative Eskimo Dictionary appeared in late 1994, after Martin's earlier 1982 version, but
before the 1998 publication of the reader Linguistics at Work by Oaks in which the most recent version
of Martin’s article appears. In any case, the stem anigu and its Inuit reflex aniu have been welldocumented for decades. I use g to represent a velar fricative here and R for a uvular fricative.
A derived form of the stem anigu appears in Fabricius (1804) as a shaman's word, but this stem is not
found in Schultz-Lorentzen’s dictionary.
INUIT SNOW TERMS: HOW MANY AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
253
fide specialist of Eskimo linguistics, Anthony Woodbury. By all accounts Pullum is the
first scholar writing on this subject who has thought to consult a specialist, or at least the
first one to openly admit doing so. Based largely on Jacobson’s Yup’ik Eskimo
Dictionary, Woodbury estimates that there are from one to two dozen words (lexemes)
for snow, depending on which ones are included5.
Looking at data from Inupiaq which I include in an appendix, one can see that it is
difficult to decide if there is really a large number of snow terms for a number of reasons,
many of which are pointed out for Central Alaskan Yupik by Woodbury. First, many of
the terms describe related phenomena such as ice; remember that in counting roots Martin
suggested that only those meaning ‘snow’ be included and not related terms. Next, many
of the terms are derived from non-snow terms, e.g. the verb stem natibvik - ‘for snow to
drift along the ground’ is based on the noun stem natiq meaning ‘floor, bottom’. The
meaning of the derived stem has shifted somewhat from the stem meaning even though
there is still a clear semantic relationship between the two. While it is not a basic
unanalyzable stem like qanik, natibvik - is not a transparent recent derivation either and
goes back to a derived Proto Eskimo stem *natiquvig-. Puktaaq ‘iceberg’ is easier to
discount, since it is an obvious derivation from the verb stem pukta- ‘to float’ which
itself derives from puge‘to surface’. Then there are metaphorical usages like mapsa
‘snow cornice’ which originally means ‘spleen’, since a snow cornice is meant to remind
one of how a spleen overhangs other organs. The snow meaning of mapsa is found only
in Alaskan Inupiaq and is clearly secondary. Even if we discount derived words and
transparent metaphors, there are still a number of terms like pukak ‘granular snow’ and
reflexes of pirtur ‘snowstorm,’ which are not obviously related to a more basic root.
Another relevant fact when tallying snow terms involves how current these terms
are in the language. Some of them are a part of any Inupiaq speaker’s vocabulary,
including the three basic terms mentioned earlier, qanik, apun, and aniu. Others are
quite specialized like piqaluyak ‘glacial ice from a river’ and are likely to be known
only by elders and particularly hunters. Many of the terms are not in general use and
would not be known to much of the Inupiaq-speaking population. Yet, the lists of terms
that exist were compiled within recent decades from people who knew the specialized
vocabulary. Then there is the question of how many snow words English has so that a
comparison can be made. Sleet, slush, blizzard and other terms do not include the word
snow, just like almost all of the Inupiaq terms that denote some type of snow or ice
without including the basic roots that bear those meanings.
Even if we exclude the sorts of terms that some have suggested should not count
in our tally of snow terms, it still appears that Inupiaq at least has an extensive vocabulary
for snow and ice. It would surely be a surprise if Inuit people did not pay special attention
to snow and ice, which are important features of the landscape throughout most of the
year. Weather conditions and the state of frozen moisture underfoot are of utmost
importance to travelers, hunters, and others, for whom faulty judgment of the terrain can
5
Jacobson (p.c.) says that the Yup’ik Eskimo Dictionary does not fully cover terms for climate.
LAWRENCE D. KAPLAN
254
have severe consequences. This particular semantic area demonstrates the detailed
knowledge that many Inupiat have about their natural environment, and the example
could have easily been something other than snow. An extensive vocabulary exists for
both snow and ice, and the claim should make reference to both phenomena. Linguists
and others familiar with these languages have always taken it for granted that there is
extensive vocabulary for the areas in question.
Appendix: Snow and Ice Terms from Kobuk Iñupiaq*
aniuvak
aniuyutyaq
apiapun
aqixxuqqaq
auksajaq
katiqsrubniq
kusrulugaq
mapsaq
natatqubnaq
natibviknutabaq
puptaruaq
pukak
qanigruaqqanik
qimuagruk
qiqsruqqaq
siku
sikuliaq
sikuqqamiaq
sisuuqsitxiq
taju
snow bank
snow house
to become snow-covered
snow cover
soft snow
melting snow
snowdrift
icicle
snow cornice
Hailstone
to be blowing snow
fresh powder snow
floating chunk of ice (listed as ‘iceberg’)
lower layer of sugar snow used for drinking water
to snow
Snowflake
snow drift in lee of building or covering a trail
glaze on snow in thaw time
ice
young ice
first ice at freeze-up
for there to be an avalanche
hard-packed snow bank
snow cornice
References
BOAS, Franz
1911
Introduction to the Handbook of North American Indians, Smithsonian
Institution, Bulletin 40, part 1.
EASTMAN, Carol M.
1975
Aspects of Language and Culture, San Francisco, Chandler.
FORTESCUE, Michael, Steven JACOBSON, and Lawrence KAPLAN
INUIT SNOW TERMS: HOW MANY AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
1993
255
Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates, Fairbanks, Alaska Native
Language Center.
HALPERN, Mark
n.d.
The Eskimo Snow Vocabulary Debate: Fallacies and Confusions, unpublished
paper.
JACOBSON, Steven A.
1984
Yup’ik Eskimo Dictionary, Fairbanks, Alaska Native Language Center.
MARTIN, Laura
1986
"Eskimo Words for Snow: A case study in the genesis and decay of an
anthropological example", American Anthropologist, 88 (2): 418-423.
MACLEAN, Edna et al.
n.d.
North Slope Inupiaq Dictionary, unpublished manuscript.
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1984
"Snow and Living Things", in Olson, Rod, et al., Northern Ecology and
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The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp
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Kobuk Iñupiaq Junior Dictionary, Anchorage, National Bilingual Materials
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1968
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1940
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