{"id":1612,"date":"2009-07-30T08:34:14","date_gmt":"2009-07-30T12:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=1612"},"modified":"2009-08-01T15:15:08","modified_gmt":"2009-08-01T19:15:08","slug":"100-words-for-the-sapir-whorf-hypothesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=1612","title":{"rendered":"100 words for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It's a trend: <a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=1609\">comix-ironic Whorfianism<\/a>. Several readers have drawn my attention to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dieselsweeties.com\/archive\/2337\">the latest Diesel Sweeties<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/DieselWhorfies.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/DieselWhorfies.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Also <a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=1468\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=943\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/itre.cis.upenn.edu\/~myl\/languagelog\/archives\/002172.html\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/itre.cis.upenn.edu\/~myl\/languagelog\/archives\/000336.html\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/itre.cis.upenn.edu\/~myl\/languagelog\/archives\/004538.html\">here<\/a> and &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Just to underline the fact that the rhetorical trope is alive and well outside of the comics, here's this morning's haul from Google News:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand &amp; the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, &#8230;<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Tetzlaff seems to have as many pianissimos as the Inuit proverbially have words for snow.<\/span><br \/>\n&#8230;a performance long on dynamic energy and full of more tunes built for seduction than Eskimos have words for snow<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Eskimos are said to have more than a dozen words for snow. Sandi and I now have at least two dozen for rain, only three of which are printable.<\/span><br \/>\nNew Zealanders have a lot of words for failure and disappointment, just as the Eskimos have a lot of words for snow.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Like Eskimos and snow, we have 40 different words for flat and the fish derivatives to make flat rideable.<\/span><br \/>\nIt is said that the Eskimos have 20-plus words for different kinds of snow. With a little embellishment, perhaps, a life-long dairy farmer could come up with at least half that number of words for grass turning into hay&#8230;<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8230;the carrier seemingly sought to offer at least as many measures of its debt as Eskimos have words for snow.<\/span><br \/>\nLike Eskimos with their fifty words for snow, my students had a keen appreciation gradations in skin tone&#8230;<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Like Eskimos and \u201csnow,\u201d botanists have dozens of words for \u201chairy,\u201d and a microscope reveals why.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It's a trend: comix-ironic Whorfianism. Several readers have drawn my attention to the latest Diesel Sweeties:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linguistics-in-the-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}