It ’s an often - repeated " fact " , and an frequently - expose " fact " , that Inuit languages have over 50 words for " snow " . But is there any trueness to the melodic theme that thelanguagehas more word than elsewhere to describe substantial downfall ? And are there other construct in other languages that have a alike excess of words ? A new study look at 616 current and obsolete languages has a few answers .
voice communication , as you might intuitively presume , are affected by our environments . This can be in the sound involved ( for example , there is a prompting that more hard consonants are used in area ofheavy rainfalland unassailable wind ) or in the words themselves . For example , you might have less need to distinguish between the various types of spider in the Arctic than in a state like Australia where the wrong kind could stamp out you .
In the Modern study , research worker from the University of Melbourne and the University of California , Berkeley , expect at links between languages and concept around the world . calculate at a digital dataset consisting of 1,574 bilingual dictionary translating various languages into English , they were capable to measure how often a particular Bible present up in each spoken language , or parole connect to a construct .
The team discover a number of interesting thing , include that languages including Latin , Italian , Vietnamese , Spanish , and Hindi have more discussion relating to " roll in the hay " , while French , German , Kazakh , and Mongol rule when it comes to words relating to " horse " .
The team were peculiarly concerned in looking into the concept of " snow " given the often exaggerated theme about the Inuit spoken communication .
" Our upshot suggest the Inuit snow vocabulary is indeed especial . Out of 616 languages , the language with the top mark for ' snow ' was Eastern Canadian Inuktitut . The other two Inuit speech in our information determine ( Western Canadian Inuktitut and North Alaskan Inupiatun ) also attain high scores for ' snowfall ' , " the team write in a piece forThe Conversation .
" The Eastern Canadian Inuktitut dictionary in our dataset includes terms such askikalukpok , which mean ' noisy walk on hard nose candy ' , andapingaut , which means ' first C. P. Snow free fall ' . The top 20 languages for ' C. P. Snow ' included several other languages of Alaska , such as Ahtena , Dena’ina and Central Alaskan Yupik , as well as Japanese and Scots . Scots includes term such asdoon - ballad , meaning ' a heavy fall of snow',feughtermeaning ' a sudden , little fall of C ' , andfuddum , think ' snow drifting at time interval ' . "
Scotsman has previously been noted for having a lot of words for the cold-blooded white material , with 421 logged by a squad pile up aScots thesaurus .
While the countries with most words relating to " Charles Percy Snow " were in snow-covered parts of the planet , the same did not use to rainwater . The team attributes this to rain being important to endurance , whether you get a lot of it or not .
" For verbaliser of East Taa , rain is both relatively rarified and suitable , " the team explain . " This is reflected in term such aslábe||núu - bâ , an ' honorific form of address to roar to bring rain ' and |qába , which denote to the ' ritual sprinkle of water or urine to bring rain ' . "
Other interesting find included that oceanic linguistic communication appear to have more price link up to smell , such as Marshallese , which has specific words for the “ smell of rake ” and the “ aroma of fish , lingering on hands , dead body , or utensil ” . Meanwhile , they found that term relating to " trip the light fantastic toe " appear to be more numerous in areas with little populations , add support to a premature theme that dance is more important in smaller societies .
While interesting , the authors observe a phone number of limitation , include that they were only capable to get at Logos tally . They seek to account for intelligence being used to excuse others in the dictionaries , but say it is possible that it would have determine their results to some extent .
The team providedan interactive toolso that you’re able to input your own spoken language , or a conception to see where it most crops up .
" Most significantly , our results start the risk of perpetuating potentially harmful stereotype if taken at face value , " they lend . " So we urge caution and respect while using the tool . The concepts it name for any given language provide , at best , a crude reflexion of the polish associated with that language . "
The study is published inPNAS .
