The Inuits are not alone in having many words to describe a thing that preoccupies them, patterns occur in the vocabularies of many cultures Adam Jacot de Boinod theguardian.com, Tuesday 29 April 2014 08.00 BST
are brought into languages is yellow, with a further 18 languages, then
blue (with six) and finally brown (with seven). As with colours, so with the rainbow. The Bassa people of Liberia see only two colours: ziza(red/orange/yellow) and hui (green/blue/purple) in their spectrum. The Shona of Zimbabwe see four: cipsuka (red/orange), cicena (yellow and yellow- green), citema (green-blue) and cipsuka again (the word also represents both the purple end of the spectrum). It is just Europeans and the Japanese who see seven colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. The differing of cultural attitudes towards time are well articulated by their vocabularies. While so many of the claims of languages to have no words for "such and such" are apocryphal, it is only in Panjabi that they have a word parson meaning either the day before yesterday or the day after tomorrow. The notion of 24 distinct hours is irrelevant to the Zarma people of Western Africas who use wete to cover mid-morning (between It is informative to look at where the preponderance of words fall within nine and 10); the Chinese use wushi to mean 11 to one; and the Hausa a language. We all know about the somewhat apocryphal plethora of of Nigeria azahar takes in the period from 1.30pm to around three. The Inuit words for snow (many of which describe the varying stages of the Samoans' word afiafi covers both late afternoon and evening, from melting process) but it is undoubtedly true that the Hawaiians have 65 about 5pm till dark. In Hindi pal is a measure of time equal to 24 seconds words alone for describing fishing nets, 108 for sweet potato, 42 for andghari is a small space of time (24 minutes). sugarcane and 47 for bananas (the basic food stuffs). Scotland goes into Even in Europe, with its relatively common linguistic heritage, national extraordinary distinctions for foul weather, Somali have a huge number individuality is healthily expressed in idioms carrying the same meaning of words for camels (many of which depict their different basic feeding but vastly different and locally inspired usages. English talks of "carrying and sexual practices) and likewise the Greeks have a range of coal to Newcastle" while Germans say Eulen nach Athen tragen (taking expressions for face slapping and the Baniwa tribe of Brazil 29 words for owls to Athens), Italian has vendere ghiaccio agli eschimesi (selling ice ants and their edible varieties. to the Eskimos), Spanish describes it as es como llevar naranjas a Take the Shona speaking people of Zimbabwe. They are chiefly an Valencia(like taking oranges to Valencia) and Hungarian vizet hord a agricultural people making the most from cultivating the plateau but Dunba(taking water to the Danube). they have very specialised verbs for different kinds of walking: chakwair, Instinctive reactions might be thought to be limited to one kind of vocal through a muddy place making a squelching sound; dowor, for a long range of expression. But if we touch a boiling kettle around the world, time on bare feet; svavair, huddled, cold and wet; minair, with swinging the exclamation denoting pain has many varieties. In Korea you hips; pushuk, in a very short dress; shwitair, naked; seser, with the flesh say aiya! in the Philippines aruy! and in France ai! In Russian you rippling; and tabvuk, with such thin thighs that you seem to be jumping cry oj! In Danish it's uh! and in Germany auwa! like a grasshopper rather than walking. Likewise the way we articulate animal sounds makes one think we all Of course, as some words express all that is germane to a certain hear differently. Frogs in Afrikaans go kwaak-kwaak, amongst the climate, one wouldn't expect English to have a word like hanyauka (from Munduruku tribe of Brazil: korekorekore while in Argentinian the Rukwangali language of Namibia) meaning to walk on tiptoe on Spanish:berp. warm sand. Nor indeed would one expect thankfully many local concepts What has taken me five deep years of research delving into over 700 to be imported into British life. One won't find an equivalent dictionaries of the world has been this attempt to discover the extent to for mmbwe (from the Venda language of South Africa) meaning a round which the world's tribes are different from or similar to each other in pebble taken from a crocodile's stomach and swallowed by a chief or their articulation and that there is no real formulaic answer, indeed what indeed, my favourite example of all: nakhur the Persian word for "a is likely to be the case is as often as not the reverse. camel that gives no milk until her nostrils are tickled". What is so interesting is that there are a number of commonalities if not Much has been undertaken in recent years in linguistic universal sentiments that are expressed in the much smaller anthropology.Famously the Sapir-Whorf theories from the early 20th vocabularies of the world's languages. Persian brings us mahj to define century argue that language determines and limits thought or, as is looking beautiful after a disease and wo-mba, from Bakweri a language currently more widely accepted, that linguistic categories influence both from Cameroon, the smiling in sleep by children or termangu-mangu, thought and some non-language behaviour but don't however limit the Indonesian for "sad and not sure what to do". cognitive capability. Now, in linguistic anthropology, there is a whole If we look at something as universal as the range of colours, 21 area exploring this while recently the focus has tended to look more at languages have distinct words for black, red and white only; eight have social identities, interactions and shared ideologies those colours plus green; then the sequence in which additional colours .