What does a chocolate factory smell like? And what does a factory smell like where you can savour not just chocolate and lollipops, but anything you want: ginger beer, golden eggs for Easter, chewing gum with a three-course meal and candies that never run out? In short, how would you describe Willy Wonka’s feast of the senses?
The thing is: that’s a pretty tall order in Dutch or in English. While these languages have a rich basic vocabulary when it comes to colour (red, green, yellow, etc.), English doesn’t have any basic scent terminology, and Dutch has only one word that is really specific to smells: muf, which means something like ‘a musty or moldy smell’. For all other smells, we refer to the product: sugar, cinnamon, meat, or freshly cut grass.
However, other languages do have a rich vocabulary of basic smell terms. Take one of Mexico’s 68 indigenous languages: Huehuetla Tepehua. Researchers have identified 23 groups of words for smells in this language (O’Meara et al., 2019). For example, speakers of Huehuetla Tepehua use the same word (ɬkih) for wet earth, chocolate and coffee. And how about dirty diapers, rotting meat and dead animal? Incredibly p’uks, of course!
And it’s not just in Mexico, we also find a ‘rich smell language’ on the other side of the world: in Malaysia. Jahai, one of the 137 languages of Malaysia, has separate words for edible food (cooked or sweet, 
), roasted food (
) or a bloody smell that attracts tigers (
) , such as squirrel blood or dead head lice (see Majid et al., 2014). And to speakers of Jahai, naming smells is as just as easy as naming colours or tastes is to us.
So, does this mean we perceive our environment differently when we have a different vocabulary for it? In linguistics, this is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In the strong version (linguistic determinism) it says that our language determines our perception; in the weak version (linguistic relativity) it says only that there is an influence. The strong version is considered highly improbable by most scientists, the weak one is not.
We go back to Willy Wonka. He is the ultimate inventor. Yellow bow tie, curly hair, slightly impatiently pacing around. No wonder he’s the star of the “Tell Me More”-meme. He races through his own factory, living in his own world of candy, devices and inventions. What would Willy Wonka’s factory smell like if he had grown up in Mexico? Or in Malaysia? Would he classify the flavours differently? Would he put a different dinner in his three-course gum?
We will never know for sure. We can, however, transport to another world by learning another language. Or as Willy Wonka sang as he led the happy children into his wonderous world:
“If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to do it
Wanna change the world
There’s nothing to it
There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there you’ll be free
If you truly wish to be”
(Gene Wilder – Pure Imagination)
References:
- O’Meara, Carolyn, Kung, Susan Smythe and Majid, Asifa orcid.org/0000-0003-0132-216X (2019) The challenge of olfactory ideophones: Reconsidering ineffability from the Totonac-Tepehua perspective. International Journal of American Linguistics. pp. 173-212.
- Majid, A., & Burenhult, N. (2014). Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language. Cognition, 130(2), 266-270.
