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We've heard this story too. After sniffing around for an answer, we're confident this is just an urban legend, albeit one with a grain of truth. A gentleman named Phil James lists 97 different Inuit ("the preferred term for the native peoples of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland") words for snow. They include "nootlin" (snow that doesn't stick), "ontla" (snow on objects), and "tlinro" (snow vapor). At first glace the list looks pretty convincing, but we soon discovered it was the work of a prankster. Terms like "MacTla" (snow burgers) and "ertla" (snow used by teenagers for exquisite erotic rituals) are
simply too good to be true. Cindy Kandolk, a "certified language mechanic," explains how the legend started. In the early 20th century, an anthropologist named Franz Boas stated "that Eskimos had four unrelated root words for snow." In Inuit languages, "words are formed by combining roots and affixes," so the number of words for snow in Eskimo-Aleut languages is practically limitless, at least in theory. But how many words for snow do Inuit cultures actually use? According to linguist Steven Pinker, there are really only about 12 distinct terms. That sounds about right for the climate.
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