Everybody has heard that the Eskimo s have over forty different words for snow ; quite a few people also know that this is an urban legend . What you probably did not know, however, is that Finnish have over 40 words for snow -- at least if we stretch the definition a bit to include all forms of frozen precipitation . Please note that absolutely no compound word s are included, and I have even attempted to avoid including multiple words from the same root, eg. quite a few of these nouns could also be made into verbs or adjectives.

Frozen precipitation that is still falling

lumi: snow pyry: snow shower myräkkä: snowstorm rae: hail räntä: sleet tuisku: snow shower with strong wind laviini: a small avalanche

hyhmä: snow floating atop water loska: very wet snow; snow, water and mud mixed together sohjo: slush; snow and water mixed together

ahto: pack-ice (broken & refrozen ice) ahtauma: a formation of pack-ice jää: ice kide: ice crystal kohva: gray ice formed from wet snow paanne: multi-layered ice (typically waves crash on top and freeze) railo: pressure ridge in ice röpelö: uneven ice tökkö: ice with frost on top

iljanne: a thin layer of snow atop ice hanki: a even layer of snow on the ground, esp. if enough for skiing huurre: rime; granular frost (the white stuff in your freezer) härmä: frost kinos: snow drift; a loose pile of snow, esp. one formed by wind kaljama: a thick layer of ice on the ground, lethal in the spring kuura: hoarfrost; frozen dew nietos: a large, hard pile of snow (may be refrozen) nuoska: "snowballable" snow, usually formed when powdery snow melts a bit polanne: a hard layer of compacted snow tykky: large chunks of snow, esp. when frozen onto trees viti: freshly fallen powdery snow

avanto: a hole in ice jotos: reindeer tracks in snow latu: a ski trail in snow rannio: a reindeer path in deep snow

nirskua narskua kirskua nitistä narista

Some of the above are pretty obscure, but these are downright bizarre. Finns who do not speak the dialect in question (marked in parentheses if known) will not understand these. And note that this is only a small sampling, linguists have recorded literally hundreds of these.

hölse: slush höty: loose snow höttyrä: loose snow höyty: loose snow judake: reindeer track in snow (Lapland) klossakko: slush komo: raised ice kieppi: snow pile mora: uncompacted, unskiable snow (Lapland) triimu: snow pile (West) triivu: snow pile (West) purku: snow shower (East) pöykky: snow pile (Tampere)

Depending on context, these may or may not refer to snow.

keli: weather conditions; the "skiability" of snow pulveri: powder; very cold, fine, powdery snow valli: wall, blockage; a wall of snow (natural or manmade)

Despite all this, Finnish lacks the verb "to snow"! That's right, to say "it is snowing", Finns have to state sataa lunta ("it is raining snow") or more colloquially tulee lunta ("snow is coming"). To fix this, I have used the noun lumi (snow) to derive the verb lumista (to snow), as in ulkona lumisee, "it is snowing outside". Alas, my efforts to propagate this meme have so far been largely unsuccessful...

Conclusion

So what does all this add up to? Not much, necessarily. It is fairly obvious that a language spoken in a northern climate like Finland will develop lots of shorthand to explain common weather conditions. 1 This does not prove the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, since the concepts themselves are still explainable in English; you can still probably imagine what large chunks of snow frozen onto tree branches look like without knowing the word tykky. And, on a personal note, as a typical Finnish city dweller who spends most of this time safely indoors in places with central heating, I find much of the vocabulary above just as bizarre and useless as my gentle reader probably does.

1: Incidentally, the Sami language spoken in Lapland has even more excruciatingly detailed words for snow. Some of the weather-related terminology used by Sami reindeer herders can be found here: http://tuikku.urova.fi/avoin/poronhoito/terminologia.htm

References

Sources used for this list include, but are not limited to, the following:

http://muhu.www.ee/mailing_lists/humor/msg73.html

http://www.durth-roos.de/sb/wint_e_fi.pdf

http://www.llk.se/

And cheers to vuo for comments and additions.