They say that Eskimos have at least a hundred words for snow. I don't know any Eskimos so I can't confirm or deny it. Although I do wonder why a language needs separate words for "snow mixed with Husky shit" and "snow mixed with the shit of a lead dog." I mean, dogshit is dogshit isn't it? And I have to admit I am a little intrigued by ertla which apparently means "snow used by Eskimo teenagers for exquisite erotic rituals." I must remember to ask about ertla if I am ever in Eskimo country.
Anyway this got me thinking about how many words there are in the English language for waves, the waves on water that sailors experience. Ripples. Chop. Waves. Swells. Rollers. Breakers....
Ummm.
Ummm.
I would be hard pressed to think of a hundred.
And yet waves are even more variable in their nature than snow, it seems to me. Every place I go sailing it feels as if the waves are different. And even in the same place they are different on different days depending on the wind conditions, both the wind now and the wind over the last few days.
For example I described the waves at Hayling Island on the first day of the Laser Master Worlds last year as "nasty, unpredictable, monster, cockpit-filling, boat-bashing, short wavelength, square waves." The Eskimos (if they were sailors) would have a word for that. The Germans of course would probably describe those Hayling Island waves with a word such as böseunberechenbarriesigepilotkanzelfüllungbootschlagenkurzewellenlängequadratischewellen. There are some advantages to a language that can invent compound nouns.
On Thursday a couple of weeks ago I took my Laser down to Little Compton for a sail. There is a nice sheltered beach in a harbor for launching, and after a few minutes sailing you are out in the mouth of the Sakonnet River across from Third Beach Newport, site of the fabled New England Laser Masters and also of the US Olympic Trials for Lasers and Laser Radials back in the good old days when the US Olympic Trials were actually held in the USA, rather than Europe or Australia or both like they are now. But I digress.
When the wind is in the right direction, i.e. south or south-west, the waves in the mouth of the Sakonnet are as good as you will find at any dinghy sailing location on the east coast. Add in the iconic Sakonnet Lighthouse and the natural amphitheater of the Sakonnet River shoreline and I really don't understand why they aren't holding the America's Cup here. But I digress. Again.
That Thursday the wind was in the right direction. The waves weren't exactly böseunberechenbarriesigepilotkanzelfüllungbootschlagenkurzewellenlängequadratischewellen to the extreme extent that they were at Hayling Island, but they were a pretty good approximation. There were nice rolling swells coming in from Rhode Island Sound with confused waves from various directions on top of them with some breaking crests. Let me tell you it was an interesting experience poking the bow of a Laser into one of those breaking waves going upwind. Going downwind was a total blast.
I don't really understand waves. Yes, I know all the theory from college physics, but I don't understand waves as a sailor and how to deal with them when sailing in a little 14 foot dinghy. I have a lot of learning about waves to do. Probably more learning than I have Laser sailing years left to learn. But it's fun trying. If I were going to San Francisco for the Masters Worlds next month I would go to Little Compton and practice every day. But I'm not. So I won't.
However, I am determined to sail in Little Compton some more times this summer. And then in winter I will go looking for ertla.
16 comments:
I have a theory about the "hundred words for snow" thing, and you danced around it in your post. (You know what they say about great minds, and all.)
My theory is that they have the same relatively few words that we do: powder, slush, wet, ice, sleet, freezing rain ... and a wealth of expletive adjectives. Mix and match, and there are your "hundred words for snow".
I can easily come up with 100 words for jetskiers, for example.
I think you may be close to the truth Chris. Apparently many Eskimo languages have the ability to create compound nouns (like my ridiculous German example) so what might be described in a phrase in English would be one word in an Eskimo language. At least that's what it says on Wikipedia.
Waves, what the ? (eskimo expletive deleted) are waves.
Pehaps I lead a too sheltered (literally) life sailing my laser only on an inland "pond" where the closest thing to a wave is the wake from the safety boat.
For many jetskiers, 100 words would make up their entire vocabulary
BlueVark - I led a sheltered life like you for many years. Actually, from when I started sailing around 1982 until when I moved from NJ to RI in 2007 I always belonged to an inland lake sailing club. I sailed some regattas on the sea but never enough to really become familiar with waves.
As the famous Canadian sailor formerly known as Roberta Anderson said, "I've looked at waves from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow, it's wave illusions I recall. I really don't know waves at all."
Baydog, you are too kind to jetskiers.
I believe
Böseunberechenbarriesigepilotkanzelfüllung
bootschlagenkurzewellenlängequadratischewellen
is spelled with a capital B.
I never got the hang of capital letters in German. Don't some of those compound nouns have capital letters in the middle? Feel free to sprinkle capitals as you please.
Speaking of spelling, I think some German fellow who knew all the angles spent most of his marks writing a book about that - Das Kapital.
Now that I am also leaving the friendly confines of inland fresh water (for brackish water at the mouth of the Connecticut), I'm learning dozens of new words for "tide" and "current", too.
I blame Eddy.
Eskimo is no longer in use,it's an offensive word bestowed on the northern peoples by others,it's INUIT.
Anonymous, it is true that in Canada and Greenland, the Natives prefer the word Inuit, as they consider "Eskimo" pejorative,
But in Alaska, the term Eskimo is commonly used, because it includes both Yupik and Inupiat. No universal term other than Eskimo, inclusive of all Inuit and Yupik people, exists for the Inuit and Yupik peoples.
The waves differ, as well as the color of the water beneath them. Even the translucence of the water differs from one region to another. This is how ancient maps could help people navigate the oceans and seas of the Earth. And even the saltiness too. You can go to any place on the land or sea and there is a strange unigueness and strangeness to each of it's own. The discriptors differ, and for good reason. There's no place the same and yet each has a familiarity that is explicitly unique. We can say we know the place, but it has long been forgotten until it can be recently awakened. Savvy??
Actually, veering from the point of your post,the list of Eskimo words for snow that you mention was the work of a satirist, Phil James. So although Inuit languages can make plenty of compound words, the words you mention do not exist. (So I'm sure they'd be confused if you asked about ertla.) Note that the word for melted snow in that list is wa-ter :)
I'm shocked, shocked to find that other people are writing satire.
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