across the Canadian far north, and up to the coast of Greenland. While the term Inuit is preferred to Eskimo by many in Canada, the term is retained here because (a) it properly refers to any Eskimo ...

Editor’s Note: This article previously appeared in a different format as part of The Atlantic’s Notes section, retired in 2021. That old cliché is a lie. It’s long been discredited, or at least ...

Languages are windows into the worlds of the people who speak them – reflecting what they value and experience daily. In our recently-published study we took a broad approach towards understanding the ...

Anthropologist Franz Boas didn't mean to spark a century-long argument. Traveling through the icy wastes of Baffin Island in northern Canada during the 1880s, Boas simply wanted to study the life of ...

The claim that Eskimo languages have many words for different types of snow is well known among the public, but it has been greatly exaggerated and is therefore often dismissed by scholars of language ...

Researchers have taken a fresh look at words for snow, taking on an urban legend referred to by some as 'the great Eskimo vocabulary hoax.' That old trope about there being at least 50 Eskimo words ...

One of the most influential linguistic urban legends of all time: the idea that Eskimos have countless words for “snow.” In truth, Inuit and Yupik language families (there is no one “Eskimo language”) ...

Anthropologist Franz Boas didn't mean to spark a century-long argument. Traveling through the icy wastes of Baffin Island in northern Canada during the 1880s, Boas simply wanted to study the life of ...