In recent years, the development of regional development and tourism has also promoted the development of Eskimo.
Eskimo has many dialects, but there are two obvious dialect differences, one is Inupit dialect, the other is Yupik dialect.The Kalalit Eskimos, with the support of the local government, created the Latin alphabet in 1721.This text was mainly used inGreenlandEskimo people in the region and Alaska.The Inuit Eskimos, with the support of the Russian government, also created theSlavic alphabetSpelling text.These words are now only used in individual areas where Eskimos live.Due to the relatively short period of foreign language and culture, most Eskimos can speak their own national language.However, in recent years, with the continuous development of the Eskimo region and the rise of tourism in their living areas, as well as the increasing number of immigrants, more and more terms have been borrowed from English, Russian and Chukchi in the Eskimo language.
Language characteristics
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Eskimo shortvowelThere are a, i, e, o and u;long vowelThere are aa, ii, oo and uu;Compound vowelThere are ai, ui, ia, iu and au.Eskimo shortvowelThe utilization rate oflong vowelandCompound vowelHigh, long and compound vowels inLexicalIt can appear anywhere.In contrast, the occurrence rate in words is higher.The consonants of Eskimo include p, m, w, v, s, t, n, r, l,â, j, k, ŋ, -, and h.In addition, there is compound consonant sr.Compound consonants mainly appear at the beginning of syllables in words.Eskimo, like Tungusic languages, also has a large number of consonant overlaps.In particular, consonant overlaps such as kk, tt, gg, ll, mm, nn, 331ŋ, pp, rr, etc. are more common.In this language, overlapping consonants are mainly located at the junction of two syllables in a word.In addition, in EskimoconsonantThe number of words ending in k and t is overwhelming, and the number of words beginning with consonants k, m, p, n, t and s.In the Eskimo language materials we have obtained, there is no such thing as "b", "d" and "d", which are common in Tungusic languagesStopeHeqingAffricate。
Eskimo Numerals
1——atausiq
2------malġnk
3------piŋasut
4------sisamat
5------tallimat
6------itchaksrat
7------tallimat malġuk
8------tallimat piŋasut
9------quliŋŋaġutaiļ aq
10------qulit
11------qulit atausiq
12------qulit malġnk
13------qulit piŋasut
14------akimiaġutaiļ aq
15------akimiaq
16------akimiaq atausiq
17------akimiaq maġuk
18------akimiaq piŋasut
Chinese and Eskimo
I love you nagligivaget
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Eskimo(ESKIMO) is his name of the tribe, which means "raw meat eater".They call themselves“Inuit”。
EskimoThey mainly live in the Arctic Circle of the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark and other countries or in cold regions near the Arctic.According to relevant statistics, there are 40000 Eskimos in Greenland, 24000 in Alaska, 16000 in the Canadian Arctic, and 850 in the coastal area of Chukchi Peninsula in northern Siberia, with a total population of more than 80000.
Related rumors
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Is the number of snow words in Eskimo far greater than in other languages?[1]
Rumor: Snow is so important in the life of Eskimos that they can accurately distinguish snow in different states or stages with different concepts. Therefore, there are more than 100 words for snow in Eskimo.
Truth: Systematic research based on dictionary retrieval of several Eskimo Aleutian languages with sufficient language materials shows that the number of root words related to "snow" is not outstanding, while only three root words (kaniq, apun and aniu) really represent the concept of "snow" itself.In contrast, English is not inferior at all.
What is "Eskimo"?
The so-called "Eskimo" is actually a specious concept, because there is actually no language called Eskimo.People living in a vast and cold land from Siberia to Alaska, then to northern Canada to Greenland use 10 existing languages belonging to the Eskimo Aleutian language family.Therefore, if we want to list a vocabulary, we must first select a specific language in the Eskimo Aleutian language family.
List of Eskimo Aleutian languages
What is a word
In linguistics, there is a concept called morpheme, which is the smallest semantic unit in language.A word can be composed of one or more morphemes.For example, the word "I" only contains a morpheme "I";The word "shell" contains two morphemes, "fruit" and "shell" (there are similar examples in English, "I" contains one morpheme, and "nutshell" contains two).
The languages of the Eskimo Aleutian language family are very typical multimodal languages.Each word of this kind of language is composed of multiple morphemes, so we can construct words that can express complex meanings by constantly adding new morphemes as suffixes to the root of the word. Such words often need to be expressed in a sentence in other languages.Consider this example of the Inuit Nunavut dialect:
Inuit
This lengthy word contains a verb stem tusaa for listening, followed by five suffixes:
Inuit
Since the five suffixes after the stem cannot be used as separate grammatical elements to express meaning, they can only be used as affixes to construct words. Therefore, the meaning that needs to be expressed in a sentence in other languages is only a word (although it is very long) in Inuit.In other words, in this way of inflection, we can theoretically construct words with unlimited length and number.In this case, it is impossible to make a list of words.
Based on this consideration, when looking for the number of words about snow in the languages of the Eskimo Aleutian language family in the list, we chose another more useful concept: lexical position.Lexeme refers to a basic unit of morphology, which is similar to an independent entry in a dictionary.For example, the English word "speak" can be inflected into three different forms: "speaks", "spoke" and "spoke". "speak" is the basic word form of this group of words, and these four words are a word position.
As we have already mentioned, among the languages of the Eskimo branch, inflections and derivations obtained by affixes are extremely rich.Each noun root can change into about 280 forms, and each verb can change more than 1000 forms.In fact, a large part of the words in the widely circulated Eskimo vocabulary list are the result of this word formation: constantly adding new affixes to the root of the word "snow", coupled with the sound change when affixes are combined, the number of related words quickly increases.For example, qanik (snow flakes), qaniit (falling snow), qanipalaat (feather like snowflakes), qannirsuq (snow weather), etc. are all variations of the same word "qanik".Therefore, in the face of these numerous lists, the first thing we need to do is to find out the common word positions of several words and eliminate those complicated derivative forms.
how
Determine the number of words
The number of words that mean "snow" depends not only on our definition of the concept of "word", but also on our criteria for calculating the number of words.In 1991,University of Texas Professor Anthony Woodbury of, once gave a list of 15 possible words related to snow in the Yupik language in central Alaska, and let us judge which words can be counted as snow.However, he also raised the following questions about the criteria of judgment:
1. Are these words really related to snow?Some words have nothing to do with snow, but they often remind people of snow. Would you count them?
For example, "igluksaq" in Inuit is often translated as "snow used to build snowhouses", but its actual meaning is just "building materials", which can be used to represent various building materials such as wood, steel, etc.
2. Do you calculate different forms of the same lexical position separately?
For example, in Inuit, pisuktunga "I am walking alone", pisuktuguk "We are walking together" and pisuktugut "We are walking".
3. Do you calculate words with different spelling but the same meaning separately?
Four ways to write "fennel" in fennel bean, or piretetag/pirrelvag "snowstorm" in Yupik language in central Alaska.
4. If synonyms can be counted separately, should words that can be both nouns and verbs also be counted separately?
Sometimes they are spelled exactly the same, sometimes they are distinguished by phonetic changes or special marks, but they have the same meaning except for different parts of speech.For example, in English there is r é cord/rec ó rd (the oblique sign is an accent), or in Inuit kaneq/kaner "frost/freeze".
5. Should dialect words used only in some areas or only by some people be included?
For example, the word "snow on the ground" is aput/aniu in the western dialect of Greenland and the Inuit language of Canada respectively;For another example, the word piqaluyak "snow like ice in the river" seems to be used only by older hunters.
After reading the above questions, I think you can understand one thing: according to different standards, the number of words can be very different.So let's look for the most relaxed standard. How many words related to snow are there in English?
Inuit
If half melted snow, snow on the tree,If words like snow white and even my snow are included (as many so-called "Eskimo vocabulary lists about snow" do), believe me, the article "Amazing Cold Knowledge: There are more than 1000 words about snow in English!" will soon be fabricated,It is enough to surprise a real Inuit.
about
Phil James' Hundred Word List
It is particularly worth mentioning that the widely circulated copy signed by Phil James100 Words for Snow in EskimoIt seems decent, but as long as you read this list carefully, you will understand that this is probably a joke made up of nonsense.Words such as wa ter (melted snow), MacTla (snow hamburger), ever tla (liquor brewed with snow) and tla na na na na (snow mixed with the sound of rock music played by the old portable radio) are all eye-catching. If you still feel that it seems true, it can only show that you lack a sense of humor.
So, how many are there?
How many words related to snow are there in Eskimo (to be exact, in some Eskimo Aleutian language)?
According to the Eskimo Comparative Dictionary of Languages: with Aleutian cognates, Lawrence Kaplan pointed out in an article in 2003 that the description of the concept of snow by the peoples known as "Eskimo" is basically the same as that in English.Just like the difference between "snow in the air" and "snow on the ground" in English, these languages are basically different in this way (for example, the two words that really mean "snow" in the western dialect of Greenland just mentioned: qanik "snow in the air" and aput "snow on the ground").According to research, there are three roots of snow in the original Eskimo language: qani ∨ "snow in the air", ani ∨ u "falling snow" and apun "snow on the ground",Qani ∨ "Snow in the air" is basically reserved by the existing Eskimo languages (qanik), while ani ∨ u "Falling snow" and apun "Snow on the ground" are respectively reserved in different languages (aniu/apun).
Deep thinking
"There are hundreds of snow words in the Eskimo language", which was spread in the academic circles in the early days, largely because of people's understanding of languagePrinciple of relativityThis theory is sometimes inappropriately called Sapir Whorf hypothesis.This theory was put forward by the linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf. Their basic idea is that the cultural concepts contained in different languages and the way of classifying things will affect language users' cognition of the real world.It is generally believed that snow is particularly important in the life of Eskimos. For example, the nuances of snow on the ice sheet, the signs of weather changes reflected by different snow, etc., will directly affect their life and even survival.As a result, when they see snow, they feel different from people living in other regions, so they can accurately use different concepts to distinguish the differences they observe.
However, the mistake of this statement is that even if the Eskimos can accurately distinguish different snow, these different snow is still the same concept for the Eskimos.In the eyes of ordinary people, "one painting" can be divided into "oil painting", "print", "watercolor" and other different types in the artist's view, but this does not hinder the artist's understanding of the concept of "one painting".Similarly, in Chinese, there are many Chinese characters representing concepts related to "horse", such as Ji "Lao Ma", Ma "Xiao Ma", Xing "Red Horse", Ma "Black billed Yellow Horse" and even Liu "Black maned and black tailed Red Horse", which are highly specialized meanings, but for any Chinese user, they are still horses,Rather than different concepts.
Conclusion: Breaking rumors.A systematic study of several existing Eskimo Aleutian languages (Yupik and Inuit, etc.) with sufficient language materials shows that their number of roots related to "snow" is not outstanding: Yupik has 12 roots related to snow or general weather phenomena, while only three roots really represent the concept of "snow" itself.In contrast, English is not inferior at all.[2]
