David Bellos demolishes the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and the idea that "too many concrete nouns" and "not enough abstractions" makes a language primitive:
If you go into a Starbucks and ask for "coffee," the barista most likely will give you a blank stare. To him the word means absolutely nothing. There are at least thirty-seven words for coffee in my local dialect of Coffeeshop Talk. Unless you use one of these individuated terms, your utterance will seem baffling or produce an unwanted result. You should point this outnext time anyone tells you that Eskimo has a hundred words for snow.
The Dish 