Do Eskimos really have 50 different words for snow?
I doubt it.
shareIt depends on how you look at it. There are different dialects to start. In Inukitut (dialect in northern Quebec) there are about a dozen words that are unique that refer to snow, and about ten for ice. Where the high number of words comes from is they will use one of the twelve words as a root and add descriptions with it. Like qanik means falling snow, qanittag means freshly fallen snow etc. In the collective work Siku: Knowing our Ice, the appendix A includes no fewer than 93 different words for sea ice.
I hope that helps.