Palabras p'urhépecha para ola

Abstract

The Boas and Whorf case study of the existence of several words for “snow” in Eskimo language, as compared to the single English word “snow”, is applied as one of the instances of the language culture-thought relationship. An alternative case is discussed, that of the P’urhépecha’s several words for “wave”, against the single Spanish term “ola”. Kinds of waves are characterized according to the criteria of the P’urhépecha culture. Also, word morphology is analyzed. The study points out the lack of interest for lexical elaboration research on the language-culture-thought link.