Is It Me, Or You, Or An Antelope?
The word “you” acts as a container. It holds the actual you, plus my perception of you, plus whatever parts of myself I project onto you. When I use the container–when I say or think “you”–I make no differentiation between those three, and so I am never aware of referring to one or the other. It is all just “you.” No wonder I become confused about who you are.
During a visit to Wildlife World in Phoenix, I found myself taking portraits of the animals rather than just snapping photos. I was looking for something in their faces, particularly in their eyes. What is in there that I can see, that is available to a human?
How Many Names For Hot?
The notion that Eskimo people have a particular and large number of words for snow has become a popular urban myth that even has a Wikipedia entry:
In reality, the number of words depends on the definitions of Eskimo (there are a number of languages) and snow, and on the method of counting numbers of words in languages that have quite different grammatical structures from English…the number of Eskimo words for snow is essentially unbounded.
This came up because The Scout was looking at a book titled, The Newfoundland Tongue (why she was looking at that particular book is another story). It lists forty-three terms that Newfoundlanders use to describe wind. Here are a few examples:
