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37: Smell words, both real and invented
🕑 Added 2019-10-17 22:21:36 +0000 UTCWhat’s your favourite smell? You might say something like the smell of fresh ripe strawberries, or the smell of freshly-cut grass. But if we asked what your favourite colour is, you might say red or green, but you wouldn’t say the colour of strawberries or grass. Why is it that we have so much more vocabulary for colours than for scents?
In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about language and smell! We discuss research into how other languages describe scents, colour-odour synesthesia, and how researchers go about doing experiments with smells (featuring the gloriously-named Sniffin’ Sticks).
Plus, we talk about how Lauren invented a scent-focused language for a YA fantasy novel! The book is called Shadowscent in the US or The Darkest Bloom in the UK, and it’s by PM Freestone. Lauren created the Aramteskan language that appears in the book. We discuss what it is like to work on a constructed language for a novel, and how Lauren brought her knowledge of linguistics into the creation of this language. For more details on Shadowscent, including how to order, visit PM Freestone’s website.
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November is our official anniversary month! To celebrate three years of Lingthusiasm, we’re asking you, our listeners, to share your favourite fact from the show! This helps people who need more linguistics in their lives realize that this is a place where they can get it, and helps show us what people find interesting. If you share on social media, tag us (@lingthusiasm) so we can thank you and reshare it.
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We also have new merch! All of the Lingthusiasm merch makes a great gift for the linguist or language fan in your life, and we love seeing your photos of it!
- Socks with the International Phonetic Alphabet, tree diagrams, or esoteric symbols prints on them. (You can also still get our three prints various colours on scarves, notebooks, mugs and ties.)
- New word art design: LINGUISTIC “CORRECTNESS” IS JUST A LIE FROM BIG GRAMMAR TO SELL MORE GRAMMARS, available on shirts, totes, mugs, and zippered pouches.
- New items with IPA-themed puns, so you can have glottals on your bottles or liquids around your liquids!
- Greeting cards with “thanks” or “congrats” on them in the International Phonetic Alphabet, in a cheerful confetti-like design, to help you thank or congratulate a linguist in your life.
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For more details and links go to https://lingthusiasm.com/post/188414891881/lingthusiasm-episode-37-smell-words-both-real
Comments
We definitely don't centre scent in our culture! I think pulling apart the linguistic and cultural history of these things is always difficult - what came first, not focusing on smell or not talking about it?
Do you feel like there is any connection between a lack of smell words in English, and a bias against the existence of scents in a culture? I’m in the USA and, throughout my life I have noticed that people in my life are easily repulsed by the presence of smells if they are not immediately recognizable as undeniably good (i.e. baked goods or perfume). Some examples: I once shared an office with a coworker who was bothered by another coworkers strong smelling food. But it wasn’t anchovies or a particularly stinky food, it was more along the lines of strong smelling italian food, garlic, tomato, etc. I got the impression that he was bothered not by the badness of the scent, but by its mere presence. Similarly, my mother just told me a story of how she put on her clean clothes, noticed they had a smell, worried that they had not washed properly, and then realized that she was actually smelling the detergent (that she likes). I just think it’s interesting that before she was able to place the smell, she assumed that it was bad because it was there.
Lingthusiasm
ooh, that sounds a little like: toshmar (tosh-mar) v.t. to smell something that you remember but can’t immediately place.
Maggie+Al
What about a word for when you get a random whiff of something out of context and you can't figure out wtf it is when you can't see it, like the way you can't taste the difference between some foods with a blocked nose.
Lingthusiasm
Haha, excellent!
Nick W
Oooo, snorky! https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/02/13 and https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/02/14 are relevant here!
