I suppose everyone has heard the old saw about Eskimos having n words for snow, where "n" is a number between unusually large and absurdly large. I've heard it range from 9 to well into the hundreds.
I'm not sure how widespread this tale is these days, but my suspicion is it will never really die out. It seems to go along (or even prove, though it wouldn't even if it were true) various ideas that are too fascinating to go away. The idea that language determines how we see the world, that different cultures are extremely different from each other (and its corollary that there is no human nature), among others, just exert too much hold on us. It's like when people used to nod with a kind of knowing severity after pointing out that someday water may be more valuable than gold. "After all, if you're lost in the desert, what are you going to drink? Oil?" and everyone nods thoughtfully, solemnly. It's these little things, these little inversions that fascinate us. At some point we come to believe that the truth sometimes makes no sense (or at least goes against common sense, which is certainly true), but a side effect of understanding this is a certain gullibility.
Then again, people are just fascinated by the bizarre, after all.
All of this is only to say that I think this is really funny.
Posted by Alan Hogue at October 11, 2005 10:01 AM