There is a persistent and erroneous belief that the Eskimos have 50 (or 70, or 300) words for snow. Foibles like this betray insecurities about our native tongue, and we tend to find a word more interesting if it comes from a foreign land, as anyone who has been introduced to schadenfreude knows. There is a frisson that comes from hearing the previously unknown meaning of an alien word—it carries with it a whiff of the exotic. A small lexical unit can transport you to a distant clime and leave you feeling dissatisfied with the insipidity of your native speech. "Why," you might wonder to yourself, "must my own words be so lacking in inspiration? Why must I speak the speech of Podunk?"
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