Answered Questions IX - Without words

I wanted to use for this post the example of the many ways that the Eskimos have to refer to snow, but it seems that it would not be true. Still, I think it is right to say that people use to have greater wealth of words for what they are most familiar with. For example, there will be far fewer words for sea conditions in those countries without coast line, and even fewer words for pork products in countries with Muslim tradition.

This brings us to the wonderful world of metaphor. If it appears that we have never had a sophisticated sense of taste (perhaps because our history is characterized mainly by the great famines), when we go to value the infinite nuances of a wine aroma, we have to use terms such as "notes", "velvet" "almond", "honey," "moss" and many more, although the wine does not have an inch of them. This is how we communicate on the new or the unknown: by analogy.

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