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Hell will freeze over before Eskimo `snow' myth melts
By Nathan Bierma
"On Language"
Chicago Tribune
January 17, 2007
One of the most influential linguistic urban legends of all time is the idea that Eskimos have an unusually high number of words for "snow." In truth, Inuit and Yupik language families (there is no one "Eskimo language") don't have many more terms for snow than other languages do.
Now, after nearly 20 years of dogged debunking, linguist Geoffrey Pullum has posted "The Snow Words Myth: Progress At Last," on Language Log (www.languagelog.org) a blog where he and a group of academic linguists sound off on the news of the day.
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