snow?

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It snowed here yesterday, barely. Just a bit here and there clinging to the trees but very little on the ground. Pitiful. We've lost all ability to have an honest snow.

The Inuit live from the northeastern tip of Russia, across northern Alaska and Canada and on into Greenland. As you might imagine, these people deal with all types of snow on a daily basis. It therefore makes sense they’d have several terms for snow, be it wet, dry, dirty, crusty or glistening in the moonlight.

According to “Outside” Magazine’s Stephanie Gregory, the “Kobuk Iñupiaq Dictionary” used by the Inuit has at least 20 words for snow. “Qannik,” “aniu” and “apun” all mean “snow on the ground.”

A second Inuit dictionary, “West Greenlandic,” lists 49 words for snow and ice. Words like “auksalak” for melting snow, “pukak” for sugary snow thawed to make drinking water, “qanipalaat” for feathery clumps of falling snow and the deadly “sisuuk” for wet snow that can slide and cause an avalanche.

Avalanche? What's that? A hockey team from Colorado?

Wow! 49 words for snow! That’s exactly 48 more than we have here in East Tennessee. We only have one word: snow. But, we get to use it so rarely many of us have forgotten its true meaning, like the word gramophone. When we do use it, it’s always in the past tense, i.e. Remember that snow we had back in ’93 or the one on Christmas Eve in '85?

Otherwise, if someone mentions snow, we just look at each other and shrug our shoulders.

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