Editing Linguistic relativity (section)

=== Several terms for a single concept ===
Among Whorf's best-known examples of linguistic relativity are instances where a non-European language has several terms for a concept that is only described with one word in European languages (Whorf used the acronym SAE "[[Standard Average European]]" to allude to the rather similar grammatical structures of the well-studied European languages in contrast to the greater diversity of less-studied languages).

One of Whorf's examples was the supposedly large number of words for [[Eskimo words for snow|'snow' in the Inuit languages]], an example that later was contested as a misrepresentation.{{sfn|Pullum|1991}}

Another is the [[Hopi language]]'s words for water, one indicating drinking water in a container and another indicating a natural body of water.{{sfn|Whorf|2012|p=182}}

These examples of [[polysemy]] served the double purpose of showing that non-European languages sometimes made more specific semantic distinctions than European languages and that direct translation between two languages, even of seemingly basic concepts such as snow or water, is not always possible.{{sfn|Whorf|2012|p=203}}

Another example is from Whorf's experience as a chemical engineer working for an insurance company as a fire inspector.{{sfn|Pullum|1991}} While inspecting a chemical plant he observed that the plant had two storage rooms for gasoline barrels, one for the full barrels and one for the empty ones. He further noticed that while no employees smoked cigarettes in the room for full barrels, no-one minded smoking in the room with empty barrels, although this was potentially much more dangerous because of the flammable vapors still in the barrels. He concluded that the use of the word ''empty'' in association to the barrels had resulted in the workers unconsciously regarding them as harmless, although consciously they were probably aware of the risk of explosion. This example was later criticized by Lenneberg{{sfn|Lenneberg|1953}} as not actually demonstrating causality between the use of the word ''empty'' and the action of smoking, but instead was an example of [[circular reasoning]]. Pinker in ''[[The Language Instinct]]'' ridiculed this example, claiming that this was a failing of human insight rather than language.{{sfn|Pinker|1994|p=60}}