Scots 'have 421 words' for snow | Hacker News Reader

Scots 'have 421 words' for snow

bbc.co.uk

6 pointsm1k3r42011 comments

Of course it has no such thing, and the headline is misleading.

It has 421 words that to varying degrees are related to snow.

If you look at the actual online thesaurus [1], and expand the subcategories, you see that this includes e.g. specific types of clothing worn in snow or stormy weather.

[1] http://scotsthesaurus.org/thescat/873/

Feel free to write to them to complain. They might change their methodology if enough people do; as it stands, their metrics keep telling them these 'articles' are popular.

Are 'quotes and questions' the 'best clickbait'?

More seriously - is the headline supposed to be a statement of fact, i.e. "Scots have 421 words for snow"? The article would seem to indicate it is indeed a fact, and the 'quote' is not actually a quote.

I honestly 'hate' the use of these 'quotes'. Does anyone with any BBC knowledge know what the reasoning is behind these?

If you are interested in the relationship between language and landscape/environment then I'd strongly recommend Robert Macfarlane's book Landmarks [1][2]. Definitely one of my reading highlights of the last year.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/27/robert-macfarla...

[2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Landmarks-Robert-Macfarlane/dp/02411...

Title is totally misleading.

At least in everyday use here, these are the only ones I know:

- Snow (teuchters would say 'snaw')

- Sleet

- Snain (this is something inbetween sleet and rain, wetter than sleet)

Are there any other languages with similar things like this?

In English we probably have 421 words for "Penis"... Tells you where our priorities are.

I swear there are like 100 different words for management in Japanese. At least in my Anki deck.

Many languages have tons of words for the same thing if you include dialects.

I wonder how many they have for whisky...

They have one: it's "drink (this)"

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