ice ice baby

Water. In its frozen aspect, Ice.

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Something so common we take it for granted, and skim over its existence in high school chemistry. Yet water is essential for our existence. One might imagine we would have quite a few words to signify its life sustaining properties and various forms. According to this you-tuber, there are 17 kinds of ice in the universe. My mind boggles at all the sub-divisions!

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When I learned that the Eskimo language had over 100 words for snow and ice, I was incredulous. Why should they need so many words to explain something so simple?

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_{close up of icicles}

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However upon doing a little research, I realized that other cultures have just as many, and that amount had a lot to do with how a particular culture interacted with their environment, and each other.

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_{melting lake ice that has separated and rippled in an arc}

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Internet sources say that Icelandic also has about 100 words for snow and ice, while the Sami of Northern Scandinavia have over 180. Yet for some reason the Scots, a tiny little country, have a whopping 421 words and phrases.

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_{lake ice under fine snow that has splintered or blown into ice flowers}

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Are the Scots just more observant, or perhaps like the Brits, accustomed to talking about the weather in detail? One would think that Inuktitut vocabulary, which revolves around the Eskimo's cultural heritage of survival amongst snow and ice year round, would reflect a greater degree of specificity.

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Some of it has to do with how a particular culture structures their language, with defining adjectives, compound words and situations. Complexity of a language also figures highly into vocabulary. It's probable that English has the highest amount of words, although that has more to do with our history of conquest and assimilation of other cultures. Yet a large component of any language is common usage.

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Think of all the incredible words we just dont know exist in our language as we struggle for the terms to define them to someone who also has no reference to that particular vocabulary.

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_{the outside of a man made ice cave; tons of water frozen as it cascaded over the surface}

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English has quite a few words for snow - we just rarely use them, because our lives aren't as dependent upon weather conditions as they used to be a hundred years ago. In fact, we've gone so far as to use ice as art.

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_{part of an ice sculpture exhibit, Breckenridge, CO}

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Look at all these neat words! blizzard, hoarfrost, slush, flurry, permafrost, hail, graupel, firn, powder, penitente, sleet and sastrugi. I don't know about you, but I never knew sastrugi was even a word. Sastrugi are the ridges of snow formed on a snowfield by the action of the wind. Amazing.

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Consider how handy the Scottish word spitters would be - small flakes of wind-driven rain or snow. Or the Sami word guoldu; a cloud of snow which blows up from the ground when there is a hard frost without very much wind.

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What amazes me even more are all the different visual forms of snow and ice that should have some particular adjective to define them. Clouds have ten basic formations, but I know there are so many more. Think of all the different permutations ice can manifest!

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When I take photos of snow and ice, I often wonder if there are words for the particular type of pattern in an ice field. How is it caused, is it local, natural or man made. Can I find the same phenomena in Europe? What do they call it?

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For instance, what's the name of that paper thin crunchy ice, the kind that forms on puddles? The same stuff that I used to jump on as a kid until I slipped on my ass and cracked my head. I'm sure it must have a name.

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And the ice formed out of packed snow which creates shallow tunnels over a river? Sort of like glacier pack. Seems there's an opening for urban dictionary to go wild...

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words and photos by @torico

factual sources:

https://www.k-international.com/blog/which-language-has-the-most-words-for-snow/
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-34323967
https://www.swedishlapland.com/stories/muohta/