deja-vu, all over again

Thank god for Jodi Picoult. At last, a female author who researches to the core of her novels and teaches me things i didn’t know!

I’m reading ‘The Tenth Circle’, which is the most recent of her collection, and it’s full of topics that make me want to read further into them. Dante’s Inferno, for example, is a text i have never considered reading in my life. Who wants to read about the depths of Hell? But after reading about a character’s passion for it, i became more interested and Monday morning i’m marching to the library to find a copy!

Now after crying, shouting, eeking, and crying some more throughout ‘The Pact’ (in my opinion Picoult’s most amazing novel) i was impressed at how she manages to make her readers want to research more about her stories. As soon as i had finished reading it i was straight on Google checking out the US legal system, wondering how the hell the ending had worked out! I was a quivering wreck, not being able to put her book down for 3 days and when finally getting to the end of the story, crying so hard that snot actually poured out of my nose. Attractive..

Anyway, the thing i found out in ‘The Tenth Circle’ is that the common fact that Yup’ik Eskimo’s have 100 words for snow is actually fiction! Eskimos, or Inuits, have the same amount of words as we do. Phil James claims on his site to list all 100 names, but most are misused or even made-up. Picoult spent time living with a family in Alaska in order to get the soul of her novel just right; she even acknowledges her hosts in her thankyou’s.

So Picoult tells us that if you look to the roots of the Yup’ik language, you’ll find that they only have 15 ways of saying Snow:

quanuk (snowflake)
kanevvluk (fine snow)
natquick (drifting snow)
nevluk (clinging snow)
qanikcaq (snow on the ground)
muruaneq (soft, deep snow on the ground)
qetrar (crust on top of snow)
nutaryuk (fresh fallen snow)
qanisqineq (snow floating on water)
qengaruk (snowbank)
utvak (snow block)
navcaq (snow cornice)
pirta (snowstorm)
cellallir (blizzard)
pirrelvag (severely storming)

But don’t ask me how the heck you pronounce all of those!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.