Tyler Cowen quotes Barbara Demick as writing, “North Koreans have multiple words for prison in much the same way that the Inuit do for snow.” So do we, no? But in our case, they seem to come from 1930s B-movies
I wonder if there are almost as many words for prison in Russia, Turkmenistan, and the other leaders on the list. Apparently North Korea is off the charts, so perhaps they have ten times as many words for prison/jail as we do.
P.S. America includes a bunch of Inuits, so I guess we have multiple words for snow also!
That "Inuit words for snow" thing is a bit more complicated than it might first appear.
I do hope cultures are not entirely defined by <a href="http://everything2.com/title/Americans+have+more+than+40+words+for+boobies" rel="nofollow">those things for which they have more than 40 words.
I would advise against calling a Yup'ik or Inupiaq person Inuit. I've seen people not care and I've seen people get very upset, so best to use the more commonly accepted terms. Of course, if you're talking about someone from Canada or Greenland who has moved to the US, that is another story.
This is by far the funniest piece on this whole eskimo words for snow nonsense:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~hal/pics/ZombieEskimo.jpg
Also, Steven Pinker does a great job of debunking the notion in many of his books.
We know those old words for prison because we've been exposed to the popular culture renditions. There are currently descriptive words for prison but they aren't as well known unless you listen to that music, see those movies, etc. It would be a strangely barren language if we didn't continually play with descriptive phrases.
jail, prison, holding facility, detention, internment camp, involuntarily committed, material witness, rendition, juvenile hall, supermax, three strikes and you're out, death row, enhanced interrogation, etc. etc.
I doubt N. Korea has ten times as many words for prison as the U.S. I bet that we're better both at imprisoning people and coming up with euphemisms.