Let’s Call It Friendship

They say people in the arctic have a hundred words for snow. Maybe they do. I’ve also heard that debunked, which is the times we live in.

What is probably not immediately obvious to non-linguists is that word drives perception. For instance, while learning Swedish I learned there was no word for (I think – it’s been over thirty years) “orange.”

If that’s true and I haven’t remembered wrong, then Swedes won’t SEE orange, not as an individual color. They’ll see it as a funny reddish yellow.

Of cou...