Jahai hunter-gatherers have as many words for smells as English has for colors. And they name odors as easily as we name blue. Challenging assumptions about smell being primitive.
The mute sense that wasn't
For centuries, Western science and philosophy considered olfaction—the sense of smell—a primitive, almost animalistic sense that was impossible to describe in words. This idea was partly reinforced by 19th-century neuroanatomist Paul Broca, who observed that the human brain's olfactory bulb was proportionally smaller than other animals', suggesting our species had traded smell for higher reasoning. Research based in Gelderland has overturned this long-held assumption. At Radboud University in Nijmegen, cognitive scientist Asifa Majid and linguist Niclas Burenhult have shown that the inability to talk about smells is a cultural feature of languages like English, is not a universal human limitation.
Their work focuses on the Jahai, a hunter-gatherer group living in the rainforests of the Malay Peninsula. Unlike English speakers, who typically describe an odor by its source ("smells like cinnamon"), the Jahai possess a dedicated, abstract vocabulary for smells. They have at least a dozen different words to describe odor qualities, much like an English speaker has abstract words like "blue" or "green" for color qualities.
An abstract lexicon for odors
The Jahai language contains specific, abstract terms for smell categories. For example, the word cŋɛs is used for the pungent, stinging smell of petrol, smoke, bat droppings, and certain millipedes. The term pʔih describes the smell of raw fish and blood. Another word, ltpɨt, is used for the smells of various flowers and ripe fruits, including the durian. These are not simple comparisons; they are abstract categories of scent.
To test this linguistic ability, Majid and Burenhult conducted experiments comparing Jahai and English speakers. Participants were asked to name colors on standardized chips and odors from the Brief Smell Identification Test (B-SIT), a set of 12 scratch-and-sniff cards. The results were clear. English speakers excelled at naming colors but struggled with odors, giving long, inconsistent, and source-based descriptions. Jahai speakers, however, named odors with the same ease, speed, and consistency that English speakers named colors. For them, naming a smell is as straightforward as naming a color. Subsequent research with the Semaq Beri, another hunter-gatherer group, showed similar results, while the agriculturalist Semelai patterned with English speakers, suggesting the hunter-gatherer lifestyle may influence the richness of olfactory language.
💡Fun Facts
The Jahai have a specific word, *plʔεŋ*, which describes the "bloody smell that attracts tigers," also used for things like crushed head lice.
When presented with common smells like coffee or chocolate, English speakers correctly identify them only about 50% of the time.
The 19th-century neurologist Paul Broca, famous for identifying the brain's language center, considered olfaction a sign of animality.
English descriptions for odors in naming tests can be five times longer than their descriptions for colors, showing the linguistic difficulty.
This location marks the Centre for Language Studies at Radboud University, a research institute not open for public tours. The findings can be explored through its publications online.