Believe it or not, it is actually a common misconception that the Inuit people have however many words for snow. In fact, the amount of words that they have for snow is comparable to what we have in English. The idea that they have more words perhaps comes from how words are formed in the Inuit languages. For example, in English, we usually use one word to describe something, like 'snow' for example. However, in the Inuit languages, it is common for many things to be expressed by one word. An English example would be where 'snow' and 'flake' become a compound noun: 'snowflake'. In other words, if one of these Inuit words would appear in English, this single word could be seen as many words put together. It can be said that if there were flakes of snow hitting the ground with great force then we would use many words to describe this in English whereas, in Inuit languages, this would be expressed as one compound word made up of many single words, such as 'snow', 'flake', 'fast' and 'falling', for example. Therefore, the difference isn't really with the amount of words that each language has for snow, rather it is just a difference in the way that words are stuck together.
