The Eskimo Snow Vocabulary Debate: Fallacies and Confusions. Freelance editor and writer Mark Halpern writes in the new issue of The Vocabula Review: “The Eskimo snow vocabulary (ESV) debate concerns the number of words Eskimo languages have for snow and ice in their various forms and situations, compared with other languages. The debate was set off a decade ago by an essay, “The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax,” by Geoffrey K. Pullum, professor of linguistics at the University of California Santa Cruz. Pullum there ridiculed the idea that the Eskimo languages used significantly more words for snow than did English, for example. He was motivated to do so, he explained, partly by a wish to correct a specific popular misconception, but much more by a wish to use this canard as a cautionary example of human gullibility, shoddy scholarship, and even latent racism.”

Also in the new VR are quibbles about computer spellchecking, the replacement of “you’re welcome” by “no problem”, of “forgo” by “forego”, and the use of “hey” for “hi” or “hello” (‘Perhaps the best way to discourage people from using hey is to respond with a hearty diddle, diddle?’), as well as numerous other goodies for those who believe in precision, elegance and — yes — an element of tradition in their language…