[Music]
G: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s
enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen
McCulloch.
L: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting
enthusiastic about language and smell. But
first, we’re heading into our November anniversary!
G: Yay! Three whole years of Lingthusiasm.
In celebration of that we are – as we have
done for all our anniversaries – we are
trying to help more people than ever find
the linguistics enthusiasm that we know and
love. Most people still find podcasts through
word of mouth. This year, we’ve thought
of something to help talk about it.
L: We want to help people find Lingthusiasm
by sharing with them what makes linguistics
so great. We’re asking you to share a thing
that you’ve learnt from Lingthusiasm over
the first three years of episodes.
G: If there’s a fun fact, or a story, or
an anecdote that you find yourself retelling
or mentioning to people, that would be a great
thing to post on social media or to tell someone
about, “Hey, there’s this podcast that’s
cool! Here’s something I learned from it.”
It’s also really helpful to us because,
Lauren, you and I have been doing linguistics
for quite a while and we sometimes forget
which things aren’t new to us but are actually
new and exciting to other people. Help us
remember which things are new and exciting
for you to learn about.
L: If you can’t think of one in particular,
because there’re so many great things that
you’ve learnt on the show, stay tuned to
our social media. We’ll be retweeting and
sharing other people’s facts so you can
get some ling-spiration.
G: You can also reshare anybody else’s facts
that you would like to co-sign. We’ve noticed
that some of our biggest growths in listenerships
have been from other people pointing out interesting
things that they’ve learned recently. We
thought we’d try to do that more formally
for the anniversary. Share something interesting
you’ve learned, something you find yourself
retelling to other people, and other people
will realise this is where they can get more
stuff like that.
L: I love every anniversary we come back and
encourage people to share their lingthusiasm,
because every year we have been growing. We
have been reaching new ears. Maybe you are
new ears since our last anniversary. Maybe
you have been with us since Episode 1. We’re
always excited to encourage new people to
discover that linguistics is fun and interesting
and relevant to their everyday life.
G: We also have another new Patreon bonus
episode. This one is about surnames. Listen
to this and support the show on Patreon. You
can also share your stories about where your
surname comes from and any linguistically
interesting things that happened to you because
of your surname.
L: We talk about the origins of “McCulloch”
and “Gawne” in that episode. We also have
over 30 bonus episodes for you to listen to.
That’s almost half the number of shows.
If you’ve listened to the whole main episode
back catalogue, there’s almost as many episodes
again waiting for you over at the Patreon.
G: There’s your solution for “Oh, no!
I’ve listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes.
What do I do now?” The answer is – go
listen on Patreon. There’re lots of things
for you still to listen to. Thank you if you’ve
been supporting us on Patreon already.
L: You help us keep the show ad-free and ticking
along. We also have exciting new Lingthusiasm
merch for you.
G: By popular demand, you can now get lingthusiastic
socks.
L: I’m very excited about the socks.
G: All three of our prints – the International
Phonetic Alphabet, the tree structure diagrams,
and the esoteric Unicode symbols – are now
also available on socks, in addition to the
scarves, and ties, and mugs that they were
previously available on.
L: We have multiple patterns. We have multiple
colours. You can buy them along with all of
our existing merchandise. We also have greeting
cards that say “thanks” and “congrats”
in IPA as well as some other greetings.
G: If there’re any linguists that you need
to thank or congratulate as the year winds
to a close, that is something you can now
do. Plus, and get this – I’m really excited
about this – we have water bottles that
have the glottal symbols from the IPA on them.
They are glottal bottles. I’m so pleased.
L: You can get your nice glottal bottles for
your water. Or it’s even more satisfying
if you’re the kind of the person who says
“water” with a glottal stop in the middle
of “water.”
G: Or “bottle” with a glottal stop there
too. They have the glottal stop, the glottal
fricative, and the voiced glottal fricative.
People won’t know that’s what they are
until you tell them. I’m so pleased!
L: Finally, we have new T-shirts and mugs
that say, “Linguistic correctness is just
a lie by big grammar to sell you more grammars.”
G: To check out the full set of Lingthusiasm
merch, which there’s quite a lot at this
point, go to lingthusiasm.com/merch. It makes
a great gift for the linguist or linguistics
enthusiast in your life.
[Music]
L: Gretchen, what is your favourite smell?
G: Ooh, there are so many good smells. I really
like the smell of rose. I also really like
the smell of almond. It depends on whether
you’re talking about to wear or to eat.
I also really like spicy scents.
L: Almonds as in fresh almonds or almond blossoms?
G: No, almond extract that your bake with.
L: Okay.
G: Yeah.
L: Like marzipan.
G: Well, yeah. Or like amaretto or vanilla
extract but almond. It’s so good. I could
eat/smell that forever. What’s your favourite
smell?
L: This one always slightly startles people
in the northern hemisphere, but I love the
smell of freshly cut grass because it reminds
me of Christmas, which I think says a lot
about how frequently my family ever got around
to mowing the law.
G: I mean, I agree. The smell of freshly cut
grass is really good. I didn’t think of
that one. There’s also the smell of the
earth when it rains. But it doesn’t really
remind me of Christmas. The smell of new-fallen
snow reminds me of Christmas – also a great
smell.
L: Hmm, not a smell that I know or identify
as readily.
G: Oh, it’s a very distinct smell. The smell
of crisping leaves in the fall – also very
good smell.
L: We have not as many of them, but we have
a particular kind of lemon gum tree in Australia
that always smells really amazing on campus
just before the academic year starts in February/March.
Whenever I smell that smell, I get really
excited because it means classes are gonna
start soon, we’re gonna have students back
on campus, and it reminds me of undergrad
days and starting university. For me, smells
are often really linked – I mean, clearly,
if two of my smells are really linked to particular
times and places for me.
G: Yeah. I was just kind of looking around
my house thinking, “What smells good around
here?” Then, when you start getting the
time and place, I’m like, “Oh, yeah. That
leaf smell in the fall is also very back to
school for me,” or the distinct smell of
each season, like the spring smell, when everything
is melting – also a nice smell.
L: It says a lot about English that we have
to be like “the smell of spring” or “the
smell of freshly mown grass” or “freshly
fallen snow.” We kind of just don’t have
the best vocabulary for talking about smells
– other than referring to the thing that
they relate to.
G: Yeah, and I’m thinking of this because
when you asked me, “What’s your favourite
smell?” I was like “Oh!” I have a ready
answer to what’s my favourite colour, but
I don’t have a ready answer to what’s
my favourite smell because it’s not something
that we think about in terms of the abstract
smell-ness of it. I’m not like, “Oh, my
favourite colour is the colour of pomegranates”
or something because I can actually just name
that colour.
L: It would be funny, though, if you’re
like, “My favourite colour is the red of
strawberries and not the red of cherries.”
G: Exactly! Or, “The orange-y red of a sunset,
but not a neon light, but like the sunset.”
We do that for smell. That’s how we talk
about smell.
L: There’s a long literature on the way
that we talk about smell and that smell is
maybe not as complicated as the other senses.
But in a lot of ways, that’s a very culturally
driven thing. In fact, as we’ll talk about
in this episode, there are other cultures
where scent is a lot more a part of the language
and it makes it a lot easier to talk about
it.
G: Is this an English thing, or a European
languages thing, or what’s the...?
L: It seems to be one of those weird Europeans
things where, if we actually look at a wider
diversity of the world’s languages, things
are a lot more interesting. When I say “we,”
I mean a group of linguists, and particularly
Asifa Majid, who works on the relationship
between language and smell.
G: We’re gonna be citing Asifa Majid a lot
in this episode. Go follow her on Twitter.
L: All of her work is really great. I mean,
there were some broad studies around smell,
so we know that experts tend to be better
than novices at smelling smells.
G: How does one become a smell expert? Is
this a thing I can do?
L: If you are a perfumer, or if you work with
wine. Although, apparently, if you work in
a particular industry, you might be very good
at smelling wine, but it doesn’t make your
ability to smell flowers necessarily any better.
G: Oh, really? This is very domain-specific
smell expertise – “smexpertise"?
L: “Smellspertise.”
G: “Smellspertise.”
L: Yeah.
G: I would sign up for this job. Like, “Oh,
I get to drink a lot of wine and smell it.
I get to eat a lot of chocolate and smell
it.”
L: I think it’s one of those jobs that’s
great in theory and then when you’ve smelled
500 chocolates...
G: That’s true. It’s probably like video
game tester, where you’re like, “Actually,
this is not as fun as what I signed up for.”
L: I think being a linguist is as fun as I
signed up for, so maybe there’s some people
who are super enthusiastic about smelling
chocolate.
G: I’ll stay being a linguist and just eat
chocolate in my spare time. Experts are better
than novices, and pollution can affect the
way we perceive smells.
L: Yeah. Maybe part of why you’re not as
sensitive to smell as – if you’re in an
olfactorily noisy environment. However, there
was a study that looked at perfumers who work
in perfume shops – you know how you walk
into a perfume store or a cosmetics store
and it’s like –
G: This wall of perfume smell.
L: Yeah. That doesn’t seem to affect people
in that workplace. They can kind of deal with
that.
G: Oh, so it becomes the kind of white noise
of smell in their background, and then they
can distinguish between perfume smell still.
L: Yeah. Which makes you realise just how
clever human brains are.
G: That’s good! Because if I make cookies
or something, first, my apartment just smells
like cookies, but then afterwards, if I leave
and come back, I’m like, “Oh, it still
smells like cookies here.” But if I stay
in there, I stop noticing it.
L: Then, of course, there are another group
of people who are relatively good compared
to the population at discerning smells and
they are people who have odour-colour synaesthesia.
G: Ooh! I have other synaesthesias but not
odour-colour.
L: Yeah, we’ve talked about synaesthesia
a bit in other episodes. At its most basic
it’s where your brain takes in one sensory
bit of information but also processes it as
though it’s another bit of sensory information.
There are people who, when they smell things,
register it as a particular colour.
G: Right. I guess this kind of makes sense
to me because I have grapheme-colour synaesthesia,
so when I see particular letters or numbers,
I also see colours associated with them. I
can see how one could have smells associated
with colours, but I think for me it would
just be like, “I’m picturing the thing
that it smells like,” and that’s probably
not actually what the synaesthesia is involved.
L: They studied people who have this synaesthesia
compared to regular old sniffers like me and
found that they were more consistent and accurate
at naming odours.
G: Interesting! Okay. Cool. Let’s talk about
some of these languages that actually do have
more odour terms than English does.
L: Yeah. Obviously, synaesthesia is something
that affects people randomly in the population.
Then, there are these cultures in which there
are far more words and terms for talking about
smell. That seems to have implications as
well for how smell is used in these languages.
G: Right. One of these languages is Tepehua.
Specifically, Huehuetla Tepehua, which I hope
I’m pronouncing right but I’m not completely
sure. This is a language spoken in the state
Hidalgo in the eastern Sierra Madre in the
central Gulf Coast region of Mexico – named
after the town where it’s spoken. It’s
related to some other languages that are spoken
around there. This is a really interesting
paper with Asifa Majid and some people who
work on this language in particular. They
did an elicitation study on particular scents.
They found 23 specific groups of scent words
in this language. They catalogued them according
to what types of things they correspond to.
They’re often smells you can kinda recognise
but that in English we don’t have specific
names for those specific smells.
L: Awesome. Can we hear some of these smell
groups?
G: Yeah. It’s a really interesting list
because some of them are really delightful
and some of them are really bad, and there’s
really not much in between. Group Number 1,
which is /ʔuli/ or /k’uli/ or /sk’uli/
– there’re all various different versions
of that sound – which is a delicious smell
like flowers, or perfume, or floral, citrus.
It isn’t just specifically a floral scent.
It has this sort of positive connation and
this sort of rich, beautiful odour. But in
contrast, there’s another smell group, which
is Number 6, which is a different kind of
delicious odour, and this is /kan/ or /kani/
or /kanini/. This is the delicious and beautiful
odour which might smell like clove, or might
be kind of fruity, or might be describing
the delicious odour of a free-range chicken
that eats corn instead of chicken feed.
L: Right.
G: I think this one may be a little bit more
food-like.
L: Bit more savoury.
G: Yeah! They’re both really good. There’s
another one, /k’us/, which is also a beautiful
odour, but a slightly different beautiful
odour. Again, English just doesn’t have
the vocabulary for this. In contrast, there’s
this Group 10, which is /ɬkih/, or /sʔeh/,
or /ʃʔeh/, which is a delicious savoury
odour like when shrimp or mushrooms are boiling,
the smell of coffee or recently wet earth,
incense, food, honey or sugar cooking, frying
meat, beans, but sometimes also used for an
unpleasant smell like skunk, human farts,
burning plastic, or burning garbage. This
one is a little bit more controversial.
L: Hmm, wow. That one definitely covers a
gamut.
G: Yeah.
L: Asifa also did some work with researchers
who work on Cha’palaa, which is a language
of Ecuador in the Barbacoan family. Similarly,
they found these smell terms that kind of
have a meaning that we know immediately as
a group – and some similar ones. There’s
one for things that are sweet-smelling or
perfume, which is “pindyu,” and then “andyu”
is for fragrant and good food – and like
another positive term. The one that really
caught me is the smell “chijdyu,” which
is the smell of burning hair.
G: Oh, wow. That was what this /ʃʔeh/ smell
can also be burning plastic or burning hair,
burning feathers, burning bones.
L: It’s one of those smells that as soon
as you smell it you just know if you’ve
ever accidentally put your hair too close
to a hair dryer or near a fire. We don’t
have a good word for it. We have the word
“the smell of burning hair.” It’s not
that we can’t smell it and we can’t describe
it. It’s just that we literally use the
word “hair” and “burning” to describe
it. Whereas, these words don’t necessarily
directly relate to those words.
G: It’s like the difference between saying
“the colour of strawberries” and “red.”
You can still talk about the colour of strawberries
but you don’t have a specific cover term
that covers strawberries, and tomatoes, and
apples, and fire engines, and these kinds
of things.
L: The really nifty thing about this is that
they not only recorded the specific smell
vocabulary items – there’s about 14 so
far recorded for Cha’palaa – but they
also turn up more frequently in narratives
than descriptions of smells in English in
similar narratives.
G: Oh, that’s really neat. I also really
enjoyed how sometimes they draw connections
between smells that I wouldn’t have thought
of as related. Then, when you say that, I’m
like, “Oh, yeah. These are related.” This
kind of aromatic smell or also painful smell,
which is /ɬkak/ or /ɬkakak/ in Tepehua,
is a spicy or strong smell like peppermint,
eucalyptus, lime – like calcium hydroxide,
not like a lime citrus. One of the descriptions
is it’s so spicy or strong that it’ll
make you sneeze. It’s kind of grouping together
something that I wouldn’t necessarily have
immediately grouped together. This is something
else that I really enjoyed about this Tepehua
paper is that they also describe the methodology
for how they went about getting this list
of smells. Because, of course, “Can you
translate these English words?” is not necessarily
a good way of doing smells in particular because
English doesn’t have the word to translate
necessarily. Instead, they used these tools
called “Sniffin’ Sticks.” There’s
no G there. It’s “Sniffin’ Sticks.”
L: The apostrophe there is very important.
G: Of course, when I looked it up on the website,
like, “What are Sniffin’ Sticks?”
L: I mean, we got really excited. We were
like, “Should we have practiced this methodology
ourselves? Should we get some of these and
smell them?”
G: Yeah! Sniffin’ Sticks, apparently, are
these little plastic tubes that look kind
of like a marker, and you think maybe of those
scented markers that maybe you had when you
were a kid. Did you have those?
L: We had those. But this is like those but
more science.
G: Those but science, because they don’t
smell like artificial cherry. They smell like
real smells – high quality smells – and
not always pleasant smells because you don’t
just want a whole bunch of fake fruits. You
want a bigger range.
L: They also smell really consistently across
all of the sticks and they have the same intensity
of smell.
G: Yeah. Because I was thinking, well, maybe
instead of buying the Sniffin’ Sticks for
€200 from this website, maybe I could just
make my own.
L: This is where the plan came to a quick
end.
G: It was like, “Maybe we should get some
Sniffin’ Sticks, Lauren.” And then it
was €200. Later, “Maybe we’re not gonna
get Sniffin’ Sticks.” They have very specific
flavours. Instead of buying some essential
oils and dabbing them on a bit of cloth or
something, these are all very controlled.
They’re for things sometimes that don’t
necessarily have an essential oil associated
with them. Some of the flavours include – would
you like a list of flavours?
L: Sure.
G: Okay. Orange.
L: Yum.
G: Leather.
L: Hmm.
G: Cinnamon.
L: Hmm.
G: Peppermint.
L: Mm-hmm.
G: Banana.
L: Hmm.
G: Lemon.
L: Yeah.
G: Liquorice.
L: Okay.
G: Turpentine.
L: Ooh... Actually, no. My mom used to do
oil painting, so I’m very weirdly nostalgic
about turpentine.
G: Okay. Garlic.
L: Mm-hmm.
G: Coffee.
L: Lovely.
G: Apple.
L: Great.
G: Clove, pineapple, rose, fish.
L: Gahhh.
G: This is the lunchroom smell. Flower in
general. Like, I don’t know what the difference
is between that and these specific flowers
but, okay. Pear, like the fruit.
L: Yeah.
G: Cola. I guess like Coca-Cola or something?
Lilac, /lɑɪlɑk/ – how do people say this
word? I’ve been corrected on this word before.
L: I say /lɑɪlæk/.
G: I say /lɑɪlɑk/. It’s okay. Grapefruit,
grass – there’s our freshly cut grass
smell – raspberry, honey, ginger, coconut,
lavender, melon, peach, mushrooms, smoked
meat.
L: Mmm.
G: There’s your savoury smells. Chocolate,
onion, menthol, soy sauce, sesame oil, caramel
–
L: Yum.
G: – and eucalyptus.
L: What an emotional rollercoaster.
G: Yeah. It’s a really interesting list.
They’re fairly pleasant smells. Some of
the smells that I was seeing in the list of
smells from different languages were things
like the odour of sweat, or fermentation,
or disgusting odour like rotting meat. They
don’t seem to be forcing people in the lab
to smell skunk or rotting meat, which I think
is very nice of them.
L: Very kind.
G: There are some more savoury smells like
smoked meat, and leather, and sesame oil,
and stuff like that.
L: Obviously, the Sniffin’ Sticks have a
lot of advantages in terms of the consistency,
and they’re portable and can be shared very
easily. Apparently, they last for at least
a year, according to the manufacturer.
G: So, it’s more efficient than just getting
a slice of lemon and putting it in a jar.
L: Well, you say that, but there’s another
smell research paper that I read – and I
have a summary of it on my blog from a few
years ago, I’ll link to it – but they
were looking at whether people had an association
between particular odours and colours, even
if they weren’t people who had synaesthesia.
To do this, they looked at English speakers
and they looked at speakers of Jahai, which
is a language on the Malaysian peninsula that
does have a really rich smell lexicon, to
do this study, because they were looking at
things like coffee and banana and coconut
that both groups might recognise, but they
were also looking at smells that only each
group might recognise. They had peanut butter
for the English speakers and galangal, which
is a really nice aromatic that would be familiar
to the Jahai speakers but not the English
speakers. They put them in plastic bottles
with little spray things on top, like you
use for cleaning, and would just kind of spray
the air from the bottle at people.
G: Waft some smell. I mean, okay. I guess
this works if you don’t have €200 to buy
some Sniffin’ Sticks, you can get a lemon
and put it in an empty spray bottle and spritz
it.
L: They did this to look at whether people
associated particular colours with smells.
When they recognised it, they would if it
was – like for the smell of coffee, they
would think of brown and for the smell of
banana, they would think of yellow. Again,
kind of showing that our ability to think
about smells is tied to the objects that we’re
smelling more than the smells independently.
Whereas, Jahai speakers were much better at
identifying smells. They use smell a lot.
They’re hunter-gatherers. It’s much more
part of their daily life skill set.
G: Have a very rich smell vocabulary.
L: Yep.
G: I noticed on the Sniffin’ Sticks website,
which again I can’t quite get over, but
they actually have a smell training kit.
L: Oh, excellent!
G: Which contains four vials smelling like
lemon, rose, eucalyptus, and clove. I don’t
know why they picked those particular ones.
I just wanna read you this description because
it’s really good. “The different sticks
contain odorants from everyday life, which
can enlarge your sense of smell. Will be delivered
in a box with cotton hand gloves. The idea
that our sense of smell can be improved via
training might at first seem strange, but
the more you think about it the more it makes
sense. Going to the gym and lifting weights
can improve muscle mass and tone and practicing
the guitar regularly will hopefully improve
proficiency, so will spending time sniffing
odours. Estimated results starting after six
to nine months.” Of regularly sniffing these
plastic vials.
L: What? I mean, in that time you could just
learn to speak Jahai.
G: You know, that one’s only €49. I’m
tempted, but I think maybe I’ll pass. If
anyone has given yourself a course in smell
training, please let us know how it goes.
You can enrol in a wine tasting course for
a similar amount of price, I feel like. Lauren,
you’re the one that suggested that we do
an episode about smell. How did you get into
smell?
L: I mean, I’m always been a fan of our
sniffers’ work – I think is probably the
very first reason that I get really excited
about language and smell. I got an opportunity
to apply all the feelings that I have about
scent in language when I wrote a constructed
language for P. M. Freestone’s “Shadowscent”
fantasy series, which has been so much fun.
G: So, there’s a book that has a conlang
in it, and you made the conlang?
L: Correct.
G: Like, a smell conlang.
L: “Shadowscent” is set in a world that
has a lot more focus on scent. P. M. Freestone
is one of those people that has, I think,
a very acute sense of smell. I think because
smell has been so central for her life, a
lot of this story is set around scent. Even
when the story is not set around it, the writing
is so beautifully evocative of smell in a
way that a lot of English language writing
isn’t.
G: She came calling and said, “Hey, can
you help me with the language aspects of this
book”?
L: Yes. I got involved early enough that I
also got to make sure that all the characters
and the place names were internally consistent
with the language.
G: Oh, yeah!
L: Once you start doing linguistics, it can
sometimes be – I refer to this as the “Khaleesi”
problem. When George R.R. Martin wrote “Game
of Thrones,” the word “Khaleesi” – it’s
spelt K-H-A-L-E-E-S-I. But the problem is,
English speakers say E-E and I the same way.
If you actually listen to Dothraki, the language
from “Game of Thrones,” it’s pronounced
/xəlɛɪsi/. But no English speaker pronounces
it that way.
G: Right. English speakers who give their
kids the name “Khaleesi,” they don’t
call them /xəlɛɪsi/.
L: Yeah.
G: You end up having to kind of reverse engineer
a weird system for the language if you have
somebody get involved for the conlang too
late. Whereas, if you do it really early,
then you can make sure that all the character
names are internally consistent.
L: Yeah. David J. Peterson talks about the
challenges of – and the complexity of – working
with a series that was already multiple books
in. I’ll link to some of that. I had the
luxury of coming in early and creating the
language so that it fit the place names and
the people names that also could be involved
in creating the full language as well.
G: I’ve read this book because it’s available
in the UK now. Even though it isn’t out
in North America, you were able to send me
a copy because it’s coming out this month
– next month?
L: In November.
G: Because it’s coming out in November.
I read it and I was expecting – because
you were talking about the language, like,
“Oh, every other page is gonna have full
paragraphs of this language! I’m gonna have
to do a lot of decoding in order to do this,"
which I was excited about, but also a bit
nervous about.
L: I feel like I would say I’m sorry to
disappoint you, but actually, the book is
such a great romp that we didn’t need to
be held down with linguistic puzzles on every
other page.
G: I mean, I enjoyed the story a lot. Clearly,
there’s gotta be a lot of work that you
put in behind the scenes that you don’t
actually get to see in the pages of the book.
L: The glacier is always a good metaphor for
this kind of work where there’s an incredibly
large amount of figuring out the mechanics
of the language that happen behind the scenes.
We have a dictionary. I have the basics of
the grammar. Then, you have this tiny bit
at the top that you actually see come through
in the book.
G: Can you tell us – because I think I speak
for everybody here that your average Lingthusiasm
listener is also gonna be more interested
in the language aspects than the average reader
might be – can you tell us more about what’s
actually in this language that doesn’t necessarily
appear in the pages?
L: Sure. There’s a couple of translational
tidbits in Volume 1 of “Shadowscent.”
But I was interested in creating a language
that was really true to the world that it
was spoken in. Knowing about this work with
Cha’palaa and Jahai, and these languages
that have much more of a focus on scent than
English does, I wanted to do justice to it.
There are two schools of thought when you
create a language. There’s the people who
try and strive for natural languages that
make as much sense within what we know about
what human languages do. Then, there are people
who make artificial languages that deliberately
go against what we know human languages can
do. For a lot of what I did with the language
of Aramteskan, which is the language in the
books, is a lot of it fits with what we know
about human languages. It has a set of sounds
that you would expect to see in a possible
human language. It has a lot of grammatical
features that are very exciting because I
want it to be a bit more playful and create
a language that doesn’t really exist when
we look at what happens with smell in the
world’s languages.
G: Oh, that’s so interesting! The sounds
are pretty vanilla, to use a scent metaphor,
but the words for smell – like when we talked
about these other languages that have these
rich inventories of words for smell – it’s
got a lot of these. It also does some stuff
that natural languages, as far as we know,
don’t do?
L: Yes. One thing is I just made sure that
there were lots of verbs for “to smell.”
Because in English was have – you can “smell,”
you can “sniff,” but there’s not a really
rich vocabulary.
G: You can “olfact.”
L: “To olfact.” I created a whole bunch
of different verbs. There’s only one verb
for “to move.” You don’t “run.”
You don’t “walk.” You don’t “stroll.”
You just move. That’s not very exciting.
But I have verbs for “to smell something
slowly for a long time,” “to smell something
by wafting it,” “to accidentally smell
something and then discover that it’s disgusting
and it’s too late,” which I feel like
is a feeling we’ve all had before, “to
smell something that you can remember but
you can’t immediately place.”
G: Ooh! Like the tip of tongue phenomenon,
but the tip of the nose phenomenon.
L: Yeah. “To smell something with great
enthusiasm.”
G: This is delightful.
L: I’m always expanding. If there is any
form of “to smell,” I can create a word
for it.
G: Hmm, okay. I’ll have to put my thinking
cap on.
L: If you have any particular forms of smelling,
I’m always – it’s one of those areas
of vocabulary that I’m just adding to all
the time.
G: What about “to smell something and you’re
not sure if it’s disgusting or not”? You’re
like, “Maybe that’s a good smell. Maybe
that’s a bad smell.” You’re just kind
of smelling it experimentally.
L: Hmm, yeah. You know what? I’m gonna add
that.
G: Because I was thinking about this from
our list when we were looking through the
things from other languages and some of the
words really kind of bordered on “is this
disgusting or not?”
L: It’s one of those things where some people
find the smell of durian or other really pungent
fruit really pleasant and other people don’t.
Some people have this moment of like, “Ugh!
I don’t know!” That’s a really great
one. I’m gonna add that to the language.
G: Excellent. I feel so proud I had a contribution.
L: Then, one of the other things that I did
is we talked a lot about how all of our words
for smells are like, “It smells like burned
hair,” or “It smells like an orange.”
As many of the vocabulary items as I could
in the language are “the smell.” The basic
vocabulary item is “the smell of oranges.”
Then, you have to change that word to come
up with “the thing that smells like oranges.”
G: Oh, wow! Okay. That’s really interesting.
If you wanna talk about actual oranges, you
have to say, “the thing that smells like
oranges.”
L: Yes. Flipping the whole thing on its head.
G: That’s great! It’s like how some languages,
their adjectives have the shapes of verbs.
Whereas, in other languages their adjectives
are a little more like nouns or something.
This is like everything is scent-derived as
much as possible. Do you want to talk about
the scent evidential? In a previous episode,
we talked about how languages have different
strategies for introducing sources of knowledge.
You can say, “I witnessed this myself,”
“I heard it second-hand,” “I deduced
it from the available evidence.” This seems
like a really good place to introduce some
sort of smell thing, right?
L: You will be unsurprised to know, given
that evidentiality is something I have worked
on for a long time and thought about for a
long time, I couldn’t resist putting grammatical
evidentiality into this language.
G: For smell.
L: But Aramteskan has an evidential system
that does not exist, that we know of, in any
human language.
G: Yes! Thank you for not disappointing me.
L: A lot of human languages will have like,
“I know because I sense this using any of
my senses,” or “I know this because I
saw it,” and then they might have another
form that is used for all the other senses.
In Aramteskan, we have “I know this because
I smelt it,” or “I know this because I
used one of my other senses, which aren’t
as important or interesting.” This divide
is definitely not – I mean, I don’t think
there’s any language we’ve come across
so far that has a specific grammatical evidential
just for smell, let alone one that has one
for smell and prioritises it over all the
other senses.
G: This is delightful. Even though this is
not actually in the pages of the book, you
can kind of feel this additional attention
to sense and smell kind of permeating the
manuscript – or wafting from it.
L: Yes. As well as the lovely wafting scent
of printed books, if you buy the paper version.
G: That’s true. There is that smell. Maybe
there’s a language that has a better word
for that. Maybe they could print it with those
smell marker Sniffin’ Sticks and then you
could scratch and sniff the entire book. Have
you thought about suggesting this to P. M.
Freestone?
L: Ah, it would be so amazing.
G: It would be really expensive, I’m sure.
Pay €200, get this scratch-and-sniff version
of “Shadowscent.” This is not available.
I’m making this up. But maybe this is something
you could get.
L: It would be so lovely. Even if you have
to DIY the smell environment, “Shadowscent:
The Darkest Bloom,” as it’s known in the
UK, is out there now. “Shadowscent,” as
it’s known in the US, is out November 5.
It has a lovely hardback and a map in it in
the US edition. That’s gonna be super fancy.
Book 2 will be out in 2020, I believe.
G: Cool. I’m looking forward to Book 2.
Yeah, maybe I’ll just have to kind of DIY
my own scent experience for the book.
[Music]
L: For more Lingthusiasm, and links to all
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G: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter,
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L: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by
Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio
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G: Stay lingthusiastic!
