Sunday, June 07, 2009

20 words for snow

People often say that the Esquimeaux have 20 words for snow.

I've never been particularly impressed by that, after all; the English probably have 20 words for rain:
cat-and-dog weather, cloudburst, condensation, deluge, drencher, drizzle, fall, flood, flurry, hail, heavy dew, liquid sunshine, mist, monsoon, pour, pouring, precip, precipitation, raindrops, rainfall, rainstorm, sheets, shower, showers, sleet, spate, spit, sprinkle, sprinkling, stream, sun shower, torrent, volley*, wet stuff, window washer

In English there also exists these cunning things called adjectives, so in effect there's no need to have a word for every nuance of something because you can qulify the noun with adjectives: heavy rain, driving rain, cold rain etc.

Anyway, what got me onto all this is that I love andouillettes: sausages made from pig offal. I love them, but Fiona can't stand the smell (they smell like pigshit) and I'm only allowed to cook them outside on the barbeque.

So I was reading the list of ingredients on the packet and it's not complicated. Pig's stomach, pig skin, and "chaudins". Illoked up chaudins in the dictionary because I didn't recognise the word and found:
En France, en vue de son utilisation en boyauderie, le côlon de porc est divisé en deux parties; le chaudin, boyau bosselé, épais, tendre, rose clair, et le suivant, non bosselé, lisse, tendre, rosé ou blanc

"In france, because of it's use in sausage stuffing, pig intestines is divided in 2 parts: the large intestine, bumpy casing, thick, tender, light pink, and the small intestine, not lumpy, smooth, tender, pink or white"

That's the French for you: 20 words for pigs intestines.

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1 Comments:

At 12:07 pm, Anonymous kensington and chelsea said...

One word for snow cold-steam.

 

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