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Eskimos and 100 words for snow?

Like many of my classmates, I was very interested in the differences across cultures in color naming. While writing the entry, I was trying to think of another example where there are differences in the number of words used for a certain concept. I thought of a "fact" I had heard - Eskimos have 100 words for snow.
Here's a site that lists 100 words for snow. http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/varia/snow.html. I still wasn't quite satisfied with this arbitrary list. So searched further, and apparently that's not exactly true.
Here is the article I found: http://www.princeton.edu/~browning/snow.html . What's interesting is that apparently the amount of words for snow do not different that much between languages used in Alaska and English.
Then, I went back to the 100 list, and found some advice from Steven Pinker. http://www.mendosa.com/snow.html. Pinker says, "Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do speakers of English. Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen."
When David Mendosa (owner of the site) showed Pinker the list of 100 words, he said "It is a work of a witty satirist. Some of the entries on the serious lists of Eskimo snow words are as dubious as "wa-ter" meaning melted snow "tlan-na-na" for oldie snow on the radio."

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