microrobert
11-12-2014, 12:05 PM
What’s Up With That: Why Are Smells So Difficult to Describe in Words?
Try to describe that awesome Bordeaux you had with dinner last night, and unless your name is Robert Parker, you’re probably going to come up short. That’s because smells (which contribute heavily to what we commonly call taste) are notoriously hard to put into words.
Recently, researchers have gained some interesting insights into this phenomenon. One new study points to a communication breakdown between the brain’s olfactory and language systems. At the same time, linguists working with indigenous populations in Southeast Asia have reported new findings that challenge the notion that all people are equally bad at describing smells. The difficulty in describing a scent, these researchers say, depends on what language you speak.
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/whats-up-with-that-smells-language/
Try to describe that awesome Bordeaux you had with dinner last night, and unless your name is Robert Parker, you’re probably going to come up short. That’s because smells (which contribute heavily to what we commonly call taste) are notoriously hard to put into words.
Recently, researchers have gained some interesting insights into this phenomenon. One new study points to a communication breakdown between the brain’s olfactory and language systems. At the same time, linguists working with indigenous populations in Southeast Asia have reported new findings that challenge the notion that all people are equally bad at describing smells. The difficulty in describing a scent, these researchers say, depends on what language you speak.
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/whats-up-with-that-smells-language/