Do the Eskimos have many more words for ‘snow’ than the rest of us, and does this question matter? As we approach the full blast of winter, now would seem a good time to lay this old chestnut to bed for good.

The person we have to thank for setting this debate in motion is one of the founding fathers of social anthropology, the German-American Franz Boas (1858-1942). In his landmark work The Mind of Primitive Man (1911), Boas mentioned in passing that ‘in Eskimo’, we find:

One word expressing ‘snow on the ground’; another one, ‘falling snow’; a third one, ‘drifting snow’; a fourth one, ‘a snowdrift’.

All quite unremarkable, one would presume. In the previous paragraph he had mentioned that in English we likewise have many words to describe fluid water, such as lake, river, brook, rain, dew, wave and ‘foam’. 

The legend’s allure spread on the presumption that the Eskimos were otherworldly

Although Boas placed no great importance upon language in his study of mankind – ‘it happens that each language, from the point of view of another language, may be arbitrary in its classifications’ – he did regard culture as pre-eminent in determining how we perceive, comprehend and mentally order the world around us. He called this the ‘cultural glasses’ (Kulturbrille) we all wear.

Yet it was unfortunate that as the 20th century unfolded, there emerged a consensus in philosophy and anthropology that words were supremely important, not only in helping to shape and determine thought, but in literally articulating the........

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