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[pct-l] snow comparisons



dude writes:
>
> I dunno about alot of this stuff, but i do know that there are many
> different types of snow (eskimos have something like 200 different
> words for snow).  some snow is "heavy" and has alot of water content.
> some snow is "light and fluffy",

200 hahaha nothin' wrong with a little exaggeration I guess...

Matthew Alice (local dude who gets to the bottom of things like this) 
writes:
This old linguistic saw has been floating around for decades. You'll hear 
there are 50 or 100, depending on how strong a point the speaker wants to 
make. The whole thing began with a casual observation by an anthropologist, 
and by the time we were through puffing it up and spreading it around, it 
was unrecognizable. (See Lucy, above.) Linguistics experts say the Inuit 
language has four root words for types of snow. These can be tweaked with 
any number of endings, but they still constitute only four separate 
concepts. So they still have us beat, but only by three. Or two if you count 
yellow snow.