Cultural Relativity

• Whorf (1956: 214):

“. . .A new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in someway be calibrated.’

• Wardhaugh (1998:217):

‘Different speakers will . . . Experience the world differently’

• Wardhaugh (1998:218):

‘. . . it [the world] is presented through the screen of this language or that.’

 

"Eskimos have 26 different terms for snow. Wall Street has as many ways..... "

Is it true that Eskimo has a unusually large number of vocabulary referring to snow?

Eskimo Snow Lexemes

English terms related to snow

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010202.html:

Snow(눈), slush, sleet(진눈깨비), hail(우박, 싸락), powder, hard pack, blizzard(눈보라), flurries(눈보라, 흩날리는눈), flake (눈꽃), dusting, crust, avalanche (눈사태), drift, frost (서리), and iceberg (빙산)

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/Misc/eskimo-snow-words.html:

avalanche

blizzard

blowing snow

dusting

flurry

frost

hail

hardpack

ice lens

igloo (Inuit iglu 'house')

pingo (Inuit pingu(q) 'ice lens')

powder

sleet

slushsnow

snow bank

snow cornice

snow fort

snow house

snow man

snow-mixed-with-rain?

snowflake

snowstorm

Rice culture vs. Bread culture

     Korean terms for rice:

• 모 mo ‘rice seedling'
• 벼 pyô/ 나락 narak ‘rice plant, unhusked rice'
• 쌀 ssal ‘husked rice'
• 싸라기 ssaragi ‘broken bits of husked rice'
• 밥 pap ‘cooked rice’
• 뉘 nwi ‘unhusked rice mixed with husked rice’
• 올벼 olbyô ‘early ripening rice plant or its unhusked rice’,
• 입쌀 ipssal ‘white husked rice’,
• 찹쌀 ch’apssal ‘glutinous husked rice’,
• 멥쌀 mepssal ‘nonglutinous husked rice’
• 떡ttôk ‘rice cake’
• 엿 yôt ‘rice candy’ (Sohn, Ch 1: 7)

     English terms for bread