Inevitably, when linguists are involved in a conversation with non-linguists, the "Eskimos have X words for snow" comes up, with wide-eyed surprise and much head-nodding on the part of the non-linguist. They state this in a very know-it-all way, because they read it somewhere they consider authoritative. This is called the  'snow-words myth' by the fellow at Language Hat.

An informative blog entry linked from Language Hat to Language Log reports that the Arabs have 500 words for lion, the Somalis have 46 words for camel, and leave it up to the English to have 997 words for penis. Mark Liberman remarks that the "'group X has Y words for Z' meme touches some deeply-resonant chord in most members of our species."

While reading Samuel Elbert's 1947 Trukese-English Dictionary front matter the other day, I ran across this interesting paragraph:

"The Trukese-English dictionary contains approximately 5,000 words. This sum by no means exhausts the richness of the language. Breadfruits recorded total 56 varieties and 25 descriptive words, bananas 23 varieties, crabs 26 species, fish 230 species; 42 terms are descriptive of magic; 28 words relate to poi alone, 60 to canoes, and 81 are concerned directly with coconuts."

I just think people are nervous around linguists. The first question that is always asked when one identifies him/herself as a linguist is (drum roll please) "How many languages do you speak?" To be fair, that definition is included in most dictionaries - that a linguist is one who speaks more than one language. Linguists usually call them polyglots, but everyone else calls them linguists.

The second conversation piece that always comes up is this Eskimo-snow thing - rarely the Arab-camel thing, or the English-penis thing.

What surprises me about all of this is the fact that people ascribe a certain specialness to a language they don't know because it happens to have a number of words for an object or a phenomenon that the speaker's language does not. One can find this too, if s/he looks at his or her own language closely. English, Hebrew,  Tigrinya, Malagasy, and most of the world's 6500+ languages have semantic categories of word that provide large numbers of synonyms and closely related words for objects and phenomena speakers interact with every day.

I've been doing linguistics in the Western Pacific. It's logical and predictable that the languages that spoken on Pacific Islands that lie well in the sub-tropics and tropics would have no words for ice or snow in their basic vocabularies, as these are not 'native' in the sense that they've always been around, and that a long dead ancestor had to put a name to them. Westerners brought the concepts and the words with them (along with ice boxes, air-conditioners and such) so words were either coined in the native language or borrowed from a Western language.

What might surprise people who aren't familiar with the climate diversity in Hawai'i is the fact that the Hawaiian language does have words for snow (hau) and ice (hau). In the Hawaiian mind, looking at that cold white stuff, or cold clear stuff, brings the same word to mind.

Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawai'i is almost 14,000 feet above sea level, and there can be raging blizzards on the mountaintop in winter as surfers catch waves on the sunny beaches below.

 

The following article was published in the Toronto Star, September 21, 2005. The title of this blog entry was a quote taken from the article that describes the remarkable young polyglot featured below.

Read on!

Headline: 17-year-old linguist a bridge builder

As a 6-year-old, Ryan Nutter begged his babysitter to teach him Hindi, so he'd understand what she and her five boys were talking about.

At Scarborough's Golf Road Junior Public School, the curious pupil expanded his repertoire to Punjabi, Arabic and other tongues used by classmates.

Now 17, Nutter says he believes tolerance begins with studying and appreciating our differences - and then learning, as he has in spades, to embrace others.

It was that devotion to promoting diversity that earned the Grade 12 student the 2005 Discovering Diversity Award, presented by the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews yesterday at Mississauga City Hall. With it came a $1,000 prize and a crystal sculpture by renowned artist Mark Raynes-Roberts, who initiated the award.

"We had about 20 excellent nominations, but Ryan was really on top of others for his focus and dedication, and he does it straight from his heart," said Judy Csillag, who co-ordinates the interfaith council's educational tours. "He just lives it every day."

Although Nutter, raised Protestant, is conversant with many cultures, he'd never been to non-Christian places of worship until he took a world religions class last fall. A field trip co-ordinated by the council took him to a Hindu temple, Sikh shrine, mosque and synagogue.

The teen, who is of mixed Mi'kmaq, Scottish, English and Guyanese heritage, found it so fascinating he decided to share what he learned by organizing Interfaith Week last May at his Scarborough school, Cardinal Newman Catholic Secondary.

Laurie Nutter, who attended yesterday's ceremony along with Ryan's dad, Robert, remembers her son's early curiosity about the Hindu neighbour who babysat him for years.

"Our neighbour had five kids of her own, and they were Ryan's best friends. And he has always had a special interest in languages," she noted.

"When he was in Grade 1, he just couldn't wait to get to Grade 3, so he could start learning French. He'd come home and tell us every new word he learned in other languages. When Ryan touched on a subject of interest, he'd follow through to study every aspect of it. He just has a very curious mind."

He writes, reads and speaks Arabic, French, Hindi, Punjabi and Latin and understands a bit of Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Sanskrit, Swahili, German and Mi'kmaq. Through his reading, he has found parallels in the teaching of various faiths.

"Really," he said matter-of-factly, "when you start to understand others' cultures and languages, you realize that all these stereotypes are not true and we are all the same inside."

The interfaith week he organized with staff support included Buddhist meditation sessions, a movie and an art display commemorating Holocaust victims. Leaders of various faiths spoke to the students.

Morning prayers over the P.A. were led in a different language each day: Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Punjabi and Hindi. Many were amazed to learn that Nutter was the voice behind all five.

"That was just marvellous, and everyone was impressed," teacher Michele Root recalled yesterday. "Ryan is always a growing ... and mature person. He's always turned on and not afraid to be a leader."

Ryan, classmate Sally Mistica said, "is like a lot of people rolled into one. He always knows what's going on and has taught us a lot of things. He's weird, but in a good and pleasant way."


The world needs more weirdos.