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From: jcurtis@bbn.com (Jack Curtis)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.psychology,comp.cog-eng,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Computer Languages and the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis
Keywords: eskimo, snow, language
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Date: 23 Aug 90 22:25:03 GMT
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	If I may insert a casual comment, it appears to me that the
relative paucity of expressions for snow in English, as opposed to 
Innuit is a function, principally, of the limited experience of
lexicographers.

	As a skier, who has skied varying types of snow surface - I have
heard snow described as granular, frozen granular, crusty, rotten, sun-rotten,
layered, frozen crumbular, champagne powder, Eastern powder, hard-crust,
breakable crust, ball bearing, ice, blue ice, black ice, wet-suction,
machine-wet, heavy powder, sugar, corn snow, confectioner's snow, undercut
(by water), boiler-plate (ice w/nobules), etc.

	This list does not include statements about terrain/snow combinations,
or any impromptu slang (which may spontaneously communicate the quality
of the snow quite quickly.) Accuracy in describing snow adds to my pleasure.
I'm sure that if my *survival* were as dependent upon making fine distinctions
in snow cover and condition as it is for the Eskimo's, then I would *easily*
have one hundred words (or phrases) for snow.

	Now, admittedly, this is quite different from computer languages, in
that what one is able to reason about is limited to a purely synthetic
terrain of constructs.  However, I doubt that anyone trained in mathematics,
for example, would find any great difficulty in overcoming the handicap
of being tied to a chair and forced to write COBOL.  (Which generally is
regarded as as in a dead heat with flipping burgers in job satisfaction
surveys.)

	Apologies to all who are gainfully employed flipping burgers.