Ends of Myth

Some things are said, and we hold them for true. When in fact they aren't true.
Phoenicians didn't make up the first alphabet.
And Inuits ("eskimos", though they don't really like being called thus) don't have loads of special words to mean different shades of white or kinds of snow or ice - well, not in the way we think they do.


Nunavut is a language spoken by the Inuits of Nunavut (beautiful flag they have), North-East of Canada. It is rather polysynthetic : that means that in one word, Inuktitut can express what would take a whole sentence in French or English.
So of course they have different words for crunchy snow, powdery snow, melting snow, ...but not because of the importance of snow in their life, but because it's a property of their language.

Nunavutmi!

Examples :
Salittutaq : 'snow thinned by warm wind'.
qaaraqtuq : 'white froth on waves'.
qunquq : 'white reflection on floating ice'.
qinu : 'sea about to freeze'.
ivujivik : 'where one can be caught by ice floes breaking up'.

The beautiful names that can be made up with such a language! I'd call my friends : "Light of the laughing evenings", and that would take only a word in Inuktitut.