Other Cultures and Smell

I finally got one of the books I've been looking for since last fall - The Cultural History of Smell by Connie Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synnott. They were part of a research project called The Varieties of Sensory Experience in Montreal from 1988-1991. They were also funded by the Olfactory Research Fund - I wonder if it still exists. Maybe they'll give me some money.

The book seems great, with sections on the meaning and power of smell, a history of smell from the Middle ages to modernity, odour and power, and commercialization. I'm looking forward to reading it - if I ever have time.

The part that jumped out at me right away, however, was a chart (or several, actually) that outlined how some other cultures view smell. One of the biggest problems with smell in Western cultures is the fact that there is such a limited vocabulary to describe it. Often, we can only use other senses to describe smells, or say that something smells like something else. I'll bet if we had a better smell vocabulary, we'd be a culture much more in tune with the importance and significance of smell.

Here are some of the cool new words I've discovered:

The olfactory classification system of the Kapsiki of Cameroon (forgive the missing accents, I don't feel like figuring out how to do that):

1. Medeke: the smell of various animals
2. Verevere: the smell of civet
3. Rhwazhake: the smell of urine
4. Urduk'duk: the smell of milk
5. Shireshire: the smell of faeces of various animals
6. Ndrimin'ye: the smell of spoilt food
7. Ndaleke: the smell of rotting meat or of a corpse
8. Duf'duf: the smell of white millet beer (mpedli) - I wonder if Matt Groening, creator of the Simpsons, knew that "Duf" was a word for BEER SMELL!
9. Hes'hese: the smell of roast food
10. Zede: the smell of edible food
11. Kalawuve: the smell of human faeces
12. Kamerhweme: the smell of old grain
13. Rhweredlake: the smell of fresh meat
14. Dzafe: a fleeting smell of any kind

Inca olfactory terms

1. Mutquini: to smell something
2. Mukacuni: to smell a good odour
3. Aznacuni: to smell a bad odour
4. Mutqquchacuni: for a group to smell something together
5. Mutqquchini: to make someone smell something
6. Mucacumuni or mutqquimuni: to secretly sniff out what is being planned
7. Aznachicun: to have oneself or let oneself be smelled
8. Camaycuni: to come across a food odour, to inhale, to inspire

These two paragraphs are pretty cool, too:

"We find in the languages of other cultures a greater variety of olfactory terms than is available in English, or indeed any of the other languages of Europe. There is a general tendency, however, for odours (like flavours, but unlike colours) to be classified according to a division of pleasant/unpleasant. This points perhaps to the primordial importance of smell as a means of discriminating between what is safe and enjoyable, and hence pleasing to the human organism, and what is dangerous and hurtful, hence displeasing. There is also a tendency for odour terms to refer to the sources from which odours emanate - as in "tapir odour" - and not to some essential quality of the odour itself, such as pungency. The reason for this would seem to be the widely perceived intrinsic association of odours with their sources.

...it is important to realize that a limited olfactory vocabulary does not preclude extensive olfactory symbolism. Although there may not be many ways to speak about odours, an immense number of odours can still be recognized, charged with social and emotional content, and remembered. In fact, it may be that odours tend to be processed in a direct, non-verbal way by the brain and so elude expression through language. This means that to undertand the role of odour in different cultures, one must go beyond language and explore the realm of practice" (113).