Odds and Ends

Shopping trips to Oxford Street have many a time been wasted locating the shops rather than actually shopping. This leads to tired feet, crabbiness and dread of the train journey home during rush hour. Not anymore though!
Saluma Roaq is Jory Hemmelgarn’s exhibition of wintertime art. Like him winter is my favourite season. Jory explains that Saluma Roaq is one of many words used by Inuits to describe various forms of snow. In his book The Language Instinct, linguist Steven Pinker states, “Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do speakers of English,” and that “counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen.” The actual number is reported to be about four but this urban legend of sorts has sparked off some funny satire. ‘Wa-ter’ is the Inuit word for melted snow indeed!
Also: Fight fight fight!

10 comments

  1. this is a little off the subject, but you ought to see the movie “smilla’s sense of snow”. it’s about knowing snow, probably something the Inuit also know. the nearness of saima and smilla was what got me started down this path. also there’s a very good, if long, movie about the inuits totally in the inuit language (subtitled, of course, but perversely in lapp).

  2. by the way, it is likely improbable that you can connect kevin bacon to the inuit movie but i’d like to see someone try.

  3. Sir Francis Bacon is reported to have discovered Greenland (though the Inuit were already there) and he is the ancestor of Kevin Bacon?

  4. yes, well, ahem. if it is all true, we can assume significant genetic drift from sir francis to kevin.

  5. hey. sorry if i went off on a tangent, but assumptions like that don’t help, y’know? and then i wanted to set the record straight and blah blah blah…

Comments are closed.