The claim that Eskimo words for snow are unusually numerous, particularly in contrast to English, is a cliché commonly used to support the controversial linguistic relativity hypothesis.
[2][3] The original claim is loosely based in the work of anthropologist Franz Boas and was particularly promoted by his contemporary, Benjamin Lee Whorf, whose name is connected with the hypothesis.
A subsequent influential and humorous, and polemical, essay by Geoffrey K. Pullum repeated Martin's critique, calling the process by which the so-called "myth" was created the "Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax".
Similarly, the Sámi peoples, who live in the northern tips of Scandinavia and Russia, use at least 180 words related to snow and ice, according to Ole Henrik Magga, a linguist in Norway.
[10][11][12] The first reference[13] to Inuit having multiple words for snow is in the introduction to Handbook of American Indian languages (1911) by linguist and anthropologist Franz Boas.
The hypothesis of linguistic relativity put forth by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, holds that the language we speak both affects and reflects our view of the world.
To an Eskimo, this all-inclusive word would be almost unthinkable....[16]Later writers, prominently Roger Brown in his Words and Things: An Introduction to Language and Carol Eastman in her Aspects of Language and Culture, inflated the figure in sensationalized stories: by 1978, the number quoted had reached fifty, and on February 9, 1984, an unsigned editorial in the New York Times gave the number as one hundred.
[17] However, the linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum contends that Inuit and other related dialects do not possess an extraordinarily large number of terms for snow.