The full Aramteskan grammar has been published on Fiat Lingua. This contains all the notes and details of the constructed language that I created for the Shadowscent fantasy world. Now that the series is completed, I decided to share the work that I had done on the language, in part to stop myself from continuing to tinker with it.
From the Fiat Lingua summary page:
This document provides an overview of the grammar of the Aramteskan language, created by Lauren Gawne for P. M. Freestoneās Shadowscent series (The Darkest Bloom and Crown of Smoke). This represents the state of completed work on the grammar at the conclusion of these two books. This is by no means a complete or detailed grammar, and some sections may contain more information than others.
The publication includes notes on a variety of linguistic features. It also includes a detailed translation of the quest text in book one, and a glossary of words in Aramteskan.Ā
Reference:
Gawne, Lauren. 2021. Aramteskan Grammar. Fiat Lingua. https://fiatlingua.org/2021/10/
See also:
How I made the Aramteskan language for P.M. Freestoneās Shadowscent
Smell verbs in Aramteskan - One way of walking, but many ways of smelling
Shadowscent Updates: The Darkest Bloom in many languages, Crown of Smoke pre-order, map and⦠a perfume
Lingthusiasm Episode 37: Smell words, both real and invented
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Lingthusiasm Episode 49: How translators approach a text
Before even starting to translate a work, a translator needs to make several important macro-level decisions, such as whether to more closely follow the literal structure of the text or to adapt more freely, especially if the original text does things that are unfamiliar to readers in the destination language but would be familiar to readers in the original language.Ā
In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the relationship of the translator and the text. We talk about the new, updated translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley (affectionately known as the "bro" translation), reading the Tale of Genji in multiple translations, translating conlangs in fiction, and mistranslation on the Scots Wikipedia.Ā
Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice orĀ read the transcript here
Announcements
Weāre coming up on Lingthusiasmās fourth anniversary! In celebration, weāre asking you to help people who would totally enjoy listening to fun conversations about linguistics, they just donāt realize it exists yet! Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth, and weāve seen a significant bump in listens each November when we ask you to help share the show, so we know this works. If you tag us @lingthusiasm on social media in your recommendation post, we will like/retweet/reshare/thank you as appropriate, or if you send a recommendation to a specific person, we wonāt know about it but you can still feel a warm glow of satisfaction at helping out (and feel free to still tell us about it on social media if youād like to be thanked!). Trying to think of what to say? One option is to pick a particular episode that you liked and share a link to that.Ā
This monthās bonus episode was about honorifics, words like titles and forms ofĀ āyouā that express when youāre trying to be extra polite to someone (and which can also be subverted to be rude or intimate). Get access to this and 43 other bonus episodes at patreon.com/lingthusiasm.
This is also a good time to start thinking about linguistics merch and other potential gift ideas (paperback copies of Because Internet, anyone?), in time for them to arrive via the internet, if youāre ordering for the holiday season. Check out the Lingthusiasm merch store at lingthusiasm.com/merch.Ā Ā
Here are the links mentioned in this episode:
Lingthusiasm Episode 18: Translating the untranslatable
Beowulf, translation by Maria Dahvana Headley
A āBeowulfā for Our Moment (New Yorker)
Gretchen reads Beowulf (twitter thread)
The Sensualist: What makes āThe Tale of Genjiā so seductive (New Yorker)
Shadowscent, by P.M Freestone
How I made the Aramteskan language (Superlinguo)
Scots Wikipedia (Wikipedia article)
Wikipedia has a Google Translate problem (The Verge)
Gretchenās twitter thread about Scots Wikipedia
You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.
To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.
You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.
Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com
Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.
Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production manager is Liz McCullough, and our music is āAncient Cityā by The Triangles.
This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).
Smell verbs in Aramteskan - One way of walking, but many ways of smelling
A constructed language can have as many words as you have the time to make, but itās where you focus your energy that can help give the language its personality. While constructing Aramteskan for P.M. Freestoneās Shadowscent I wanted to give the vocabulary of smelling its own detail, since scent is so important to this world.
I have had a lot of fun creating specific verbs for different ways of smelling things in Aramteskan. As the Jakobson quote goes āLanguages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may conveyā (1959). English speakers can convey these meanings (after all, there are translations!), but donāt have single specific words for these meanings like Aramteskan does.
Here are some of the smell verbs Iāve created so far:
gatmar Ā (gat-mar) v.t. to smell something deeply without knowing what it will smell like; to inhale irresponsibly.
gukmar Ā (guk-mar) v.t. to smell something bad, often unintentionally, and then feel disgust.
hukmar Ā (huk-mar) v.t. to smell something non-volitional, has a similar sense to gakmar but doesn't have to make you feel as ill.
nelmar Ā (nel-mar) v.t. to smell something faintly, often on a breeze.
nosnar Ā (nos-nar) v.t. to smell something slowly for a long time because it has a pleasant smell, such as burying one's nose in a bouquet of flowers.
nulmar Ā (nul-mar) v.t. to smell, the general verb for smelling.
rashmarĀ (rash-mar) v.t. to smell something by wafting the scent to your nose with your hand.
sugmar Ā (sugmar) v.t. to smell cautiously, as though unsure of what the scent will be, to sniff.
toshmar Ā (tosh-mar) v.t. to smell something that you remember but can't immediately place.
yidnar Ā (yid-nar) v.t. to smell with great enthusiasm, to inhale a scent deeply.
Lingthusiasm listeners will notice that Gretchenās suggestion āto smell something and youāre not sure if itās disgusting or notā has been added as sugmar.
Linguistically minded people will notice these verbs have a similar ending, which we donāt see in other verbs like āwalkā tawrad, āeatā garat and āmakeā donshir, indicating that perhaps there is some common root word here.
See also:
P.M. Freestoneās website
How I made the Aramteskan language for P.M. Freestoneās Shadowscent
Lingthusiasm Episode 37: Smell words, both real and invented
Lingthusiasm Episode 18: Translating the untranslatable
The Darkest Bloom: Shadowscent Book 1 is out in the UK!
Lingthusiasm Episode 37: Smell words, both real and inventedĀ
Whatās your favourite smell? You might say something like the smell of fresh ripe strawberries, or the smell of freshly-cut grass. But if we asked what your favourite colour is, you might say red or green, but you wouldnāt say the colour of strawberries or grass. Why is it that we have so much more vocabulary for colours than for scents?Ā
In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about language and smell! We discuss research into how languages describe scents, colour-odour synesthesia, and how researchers go about doing experiments on smell vocabulary (featuring the gloriously-named Sniffinā Sticks).
Plus, we talk about how Lauren invented a scent-focused language for a YA fantasy novel! The book is called Shadowscent in the US or The Darkest Bloom in the UK, and itās by PM Freestone. Lauren created the Aramteskan language that appears in the book. We discuss what it is like to work on a constructed language for a novel, and how Lauren brought her knowledge of linguistics into the creation of this language. For more details on Shadowscent, including how to order, visit PM Freestoneās website.
Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice orĀ read the transcript here
Announcements:
November is our official anniversary month! To celebrate three years ofĀ Lingthusiasm, weāre asking you, our listeners, to share your favourite fact from the show! This helps people who need more linguistics in their lives realize that this is a place where they can get it, and helps show us what people find interesting. If you share on social media, tag us (@lingthusiasm) so we can thank you and reshare it.Ā Ā
We also have new merch! All of the Lingthusiasm merch makes a great gift for the linguist or language fan in your life, and we love seeing your photos of it!Ā
Socks with the International Phonetic Alphabet, tree diagrams, or esoteric symbols printsĀ on them. (You can also still get our three prints various colours on scarves, notebooks, mugs and ties.)
New word art design: LINGUISTIC "CORRECTNESS" IS JUST A LIE FROM BIG GRAMMAR TO SELL MORE GRAMMARS, available on shirts, totes, mugs, and zippered pouches.Ā
New items with IPA-themed puns, so you can have glottals on your bottles or liquids around your liquids!Ā
Greeting cards with "thanks" or "congrats" on them in the International Phonetic Alphabet, in a cheerful confetti-like design, to help you thank or congratulate a linguist in your life.Ā
This monthās bonus episode is about surnames! We share the history of our own surnames, how different cultures approach naming, and when people change names. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the directions episode and 31 previous bonus episodes.
Here are the links mentioned in this episode:
Asifa Majid (Twitter)
Asifa Majid academic website
Odor-color synaesthesia (Abstract)
What Makes a Better Smeller? (Open Access publication)
Smells have colours (Superlinguo summary)
Huehuetla Tepehua Olfactory Language (PDF publication)
Cha'palaa Olfactory Language (Open Access publication)
Sniffinā Sticks
Shadowscent original announcement (Superlinguo)
Shadowscent UK release (Superlinguo)
David J. Peterson on Khaleesi
You heard about it but I was there - Evidentiality (Lingthusiasm episode 32)
Colour words around the world and inside your brain (Lingthusiasm episode 5)Ā
More info/how to order ShadowscentĀ (PM Freestoneās website)
You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.
To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.
You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.
Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com
Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.
Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, and our music is āAncient Cityā by The Triangles.
This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).
Shadowscent Updates: The Darkest Bloom in many languages, Crown of Smoke pre-order, map and... a perfume
So much exciting news for PM Freestoneās Shadowscent duology! Hereās an update on whatās been happening.
The Darkest Bloom translated into four languages and counting
The Darkest Bloom, the first book in the series is now available in German (with a beautiful new cover), French, Spanish and Russian, with Hungarian, Czech and Polish to come. I am very excited to see how Aramteskan words have been given grammatical gender and case markers across the different translations! Iām possibly even more excited to see how things got transliterated into Cyrillic for the Russian.
Crown of Smoke pre-orders for 2nd of April 2020
The Shadowscent story is wrapping up with book two Crown of Smoke out on the 2nd of April. US readers can order from the UK, as UK Scholastic will be handling all orders. Itās a fun and face-paced adventure with the future of the empire at stake and Iām looking forward to holding this beauty:
Map of Aramtesh from Virginia Allyn
Crown of Smoke readers will get to see Virginia Allynās map of Aramtesh. This map featured in the US print of The Darkest Bloom (āShadowscentā in the US). Itās full of so much wonderful detail.
The Darkest Bloom... as a fragrance!
Finally, 4160 Tuesdays is a small perfume house in the UK and they have teamed up with P.M. Freestone to create The Darkest Bloom, a fragrance inspired by the world of Shadowscent. Iām beyond excited to smell this. This must be the first fantasy world with its own scent-based conlang, map and fragrance.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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How I made the Aramteskan language for P.M. Freestoneās Shadowscent
When P.M. Freestone first told me about Shadowscent, her YA Fantasy duology set in a scent-filled world, I was immediately intrigued. After reading an early draft of the opening chapter I was hooked. I have greatly enjoyed having the opportunity to create the Aramteskan language for this series.
You get some glimpses of Aramteskan in book one The Darkest Bloom (or Shadowscent as itās known in the USA), but thereās a lot more of the language that doesnāt make it onto the page. Over the next year or so between books one and two being published I'll be writing occasional posts about how the language works.
I want to start by outlining the three main things that influenced my decision-making process; the world of Aramtesh, the medium of books and how language works.
Thinking about the world Freestone built
In Aramtesh scent is prized, commodified and used to create social meaning in a way that is more like visual status symbols in our culture. I therefore made it central to many choices I made about how the grammar of the language works. There are many more verbs for smelling than, say, movement. There are also subtle translation choices; people in Aramtesh donāt talk about āfacing forwardā, they talk about being ānose forwardā. The language also has an evidential system that marks if you know about something because you smelled it.
Of course, there are non-scent features of the world that influence the language too. Aramtesh is an empire with diverse geography, and a range of cultures. Freestone and I spent a lot of time talking through these different regions and their history. Although there is one language spoken across the Empire, it has its own characteristics in each area; People from Hagmir pronounce vowels more like Old Aramteskan, youāll only find names with āphā in Aphorai and names that begin with āIā are distinctly from Trel (Hi there Iddo!).
Thereās also at least half a millennium of time history between the earliest documents of the empire and when the story takes place. I built a few centuries of language change into Aramteskan to give that sense of history; think something between Chaucerās Middle English and Shakespearās early Modern English.
Thinking about books and reading
The language not only had to suit the world, but also work in YA fantasy with a cracking pace. All of the sounds of the language can be written using standard keyboard, and mostly have the pronunciation you would expect as an English speaker. We didnāt want the language to feel too jarring to readers.
Did I also take into account how the language would sound if someone turned Shadowscent into a film or TV show? Of course!
Iām very excited that translation rights have been sold for a number of language. Iām looking forward to seeing how the names and words we created are translated into French, Hungarian and Czech, and very excited to see how theyāll look transliterated into Cyrillic for the Russian version.
Thinking about how human language works
Because constructed languages are made through a series of conscious choices, it provides an opportunity to make decisions to include features that donāt appear in ānatural languagesā (the term conlangers use for language that emerge through use and transmission, like English, ASL, Hindi and the 7000 or so others). I wanted Aramteskan to be mostly naturalistic, doing things that we usually find in human languages, with a few twists.
This is where my knowledge of linguistics became very useful. I know that most of the structures Iāve created are not very unusual, but some of them are so unusual we donāt have any documented evidence of them in natural languages. Take the āsmell evidentialā I mentioned above. We know that around a quarter of the worldās languages have evidentials, which let you mark the source of your evidence. Many languages have one that marks that you saw something, or sensed it, or that someone told you about it. No natural human language to date has one that means specifically you know something because you smelt it. Adding that was a fun way to break with naturalness, while also fitting in with the world of Aramtesh.
Shadowscent book 1 available now!
Shadowscent: The Darkest Bloom is out in the UK, and is now in the US with a different cover (and a map!!!), and is just called Shadowscent.Ā For more details, and information about where you can buy a copy, visit P.M. Freestoneās website.
See also:
The Art of Language Invention - David J. Peterson (my review of this handy book)
Lingthusiasm Episode 37: Smell words, both real and invented
The Darkest Bloom: Shadowscent Book 1 is out in the UK!
Transcript Episode 37: Smell words, both real and invented
This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 37: Smell words, both real and invented. Itās been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 37 show notes page.
[Music]
Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast thatās enthusiastic about linguistics! Iām Gretchen McCulloch.
Lauren: Iām Lauren Gawne. Today, weāre getting enthusiastic about language and smell. But first, weāre heading into our November anniversary!
Gretchen: Yay! Three whole years of Lingthusiasm. In celebration of that we are ā as we have done for all our anniversaries ā 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, weāve thought of something to help talk about it.
Lauren: We want to help people find Lingthusiasm by sharing with them what makes linguistics so great. Weāre asking you to share a thing that youāve learnt from Lingthusiasm over the first three years of episodes.
Gretchen: If thereās 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, āHey, thereās this podcast thatās cool! Hereās something I learned from it.ā Itās also really helpful to us because, Lauren, you and I have been doing linguistics for quite a while and we sometimes forget which things arenāt 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!
Lauren: If you canāt think of one in particular, because thereāre so many great things that youāve learnt on the show, stay tuned to our social media. Weāll be retweeting and sharing other peopleās facts so you can get some ling-spiration.
Gretchen: You can also reshare anybody elseās facts that you would like to co-sign. Weāve noticed that some of our biggest growths in listenerships have been from other people pointing out interesting things that theyāve learned recently. We thought weād try to do that more formally for the anniversary. Share something interesting youāve learned, something you find yourself retelling to other people, and other people will realise this is where they can get more stuff like that.
Lauren: 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. Weāre always excited to encourage new people to discover that linguistics is fun and interesting and relevant to their everyday life.
Gretchen: 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.
Lauren: We talk about the origins of āMcCullochā and āGawneā in that episode. We also have over 30 bonus episodes for you to listen to. Thatās almost half the number of shows. If youāve listened to the whole main episode back catalogue, thereās almost as many episodes again waiting for you over at the Patreon.
Gretchen: Thereās your solution for āOh, no! Iāve listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes. What do I do now?ā The answer is ā go listen on Patreon. Thereāre lots of things for you still to listen to. Thank you if youāve been supporting us on Patreon already.
Lauren: You help us keep the show ad-free and ticking along. We also have exciting new Lingthusiasm merch for you.
Gretchen: By popular demand, you can now get lingthusiastic socks!Ā
Lauren: Iām very excited about the socks.
Gretchen: All three of our prints ā the International Phonetic Alphabet, the tree structure diagrams, and the esoteric Unicode symbols ā are now also available on socks, in addition to the scarves, and ties, and mugs that they were previously available on.
Lauren: 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 āthanksā and ācongratsā in IPA as well as some other greetings.
Gretchen: If thereāre 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 ā Iām really excited about this ā we have water bottles that have the glottal symbols from the IPA on them. They are glottal bottles. Iām so pleased.
Lauren: You can get your nice glottal bottles for your water. Or itās even more satisfying if youāre the kind of the person who says āwaterā with a glottal stop in the middle of āwater.ā
Gretchen: Or ābottleā with a glottal stop there too. They have the glottal stop, the glottal fricative, and the voiced glottal fricative. People wonāt know thatās what they are until you tell them. Iām so pleased!
Lauren: Finally, we have new T-shirts and mugs that say, āLinguistic correctness is just a lie by big grammar to sell you more grammars.ā
Gretchen: To check out the full set of Lingthusiasm merch, which thereās quite a lot of at this point, go to lingthusiasm.com/merch. It makes a great gift for the linguist or linguistics enthusiast in your life.
[Music]
Lauren: Gretchen, what is your favourite smell?
Gretchen: 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 youāre talking about to wear or to eat. I also really like spicy scents.
Lauren: Almonds as in fresh almonds or almond blossoms?
Gretchen: No, almond extract that you bake with.
Lauren: Okay.
Gretchen: Yeah.
Lauren: Like marzipan.
Gretchen: Well, yeah. Or like amaretto, or vanilla extract but almond. Itās so good. I could eat/smell that forever. Whatās your favourite smell?
Lauren: 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 lawn.
Gretchen: I mean, I agree. The smell of freshly cut grass is really good. I didnāt think of that one. Thereās also the smell of the earth when it rains. But it doesnāt really remind me of Christmas. The smell of new-fallen snow reminds me of Christmas ā also a great smell.
Lauren: Hmm, not a smell that I know or identify as readily.
Gretchen: Oh, itās a very distinct smell. The smell of crisping leaves in the fall ā also very good smell.
Lauren: 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, weāre gonna have students back on campus, and it reminds me of undergrad days and starting university. For me, smells are often really linked ā I mean, clearly, if two of my smells are really linked to particular times and places for me.
Gretchen: Yeah. I was just kind of looking around my house thinking, āWhat smells good around here?ā Then, when you start getting the time and place, Iām like, āOh, yeah. That leaf smell in the fall is also very back to school for me,ā or the distinct smell of each season, like the spring smell, when everything is melting ā also a nice smell.
Lauren: It says a lot about English that we have to be like āthe smell of springā or āthe smell of freshly mown grassā or āfreshly fallen snow.ā We kind of just donāt have the best vocabulary for talking about smells ā other than referring to the thing that they relate to.
Gretchen: Yeah, and Iām thinking of this because when you asked me, āWhatās your favourite smell?ā I was like āOh!ā I have a ready answer to whatās my favourite colour, but I donāt have a ready answer to whatās my favourite smell because itās not something that we think about in terms of the abstract smell-ness of it. Iām not like, āOh, my favourite colour is the colour of pomegranatesā or something because I can actually just name that colour.
Lauren: It would be funny, though, if youāre like, āMy favourite colour is the red of strawberries and not the red of cherries.ā
Gretchen: Exactly! Or, āThe orange-y red of a sunset, but not a neon light, but like the sunset.ā We do that for smell. Thatās how we talk about smell.
Lauren: Thereās 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, thatās a very culturally driven thing. In fact, as weāll 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.
Gretchen: Is this an English thing, or a European languages thing, or whatās the...?
Lauren: It seems to be one of those weird European things where, if we actually look at a wider diversity of the worldās languages, things are a lot more interesting. When I say āwe,ā I mean a group of linguists, and particularly Asifa Majid, who works on the relationship between language and smell.
Gretchen: Weāre gonna be citing Asifa Majid a lot in this episode. Go follow her on Twitter.
Lauren: 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.
Gretchen: How does one become a smell expert? Is this a thing I can do?
Lauren: 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 doesnāt make your ability to smell flowers necessarily any better.
Gretchen: Oh, really? This is very domain-specific smell expertise ā āsmexpertise"?
Lauren: āSmellspertise.ā
Gretchen: āSmellspertise.ā
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: I would sign up for this job. Like, āOh, I get to drink a lot of wine and smell it. I get to eat a lot of chocolate and smell it.ā
Lauren: I think itās one of those jobs thatās great in theory and then when youāve smelled 500 chocolates...
Gretchen: Thatās true. Itās probably like video game tester, where youāre like, āActually, this is not as fun as what I signed up for.ā
Lauren: I think being a linguist is as fun as I signed up for, so maybe thereās some people who are super enthusiastic about smelling chocolate.
Gretchen: Iāll 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.
Lauren: Yeah. Maybe part of why youāre not as sensitive to smell as ā if youāre in an olfactorily noisy environment. However, there was a study that looked at perfumers who work in perfume shops ā you know how you walk into a perfume store or a cosmetics store and itās like ā
Gretchen: This wall of perfume smell.
Lauren: Yeah. That doesnāt seem to affect people in that workplace. They can kind of deal with that.
Gretchen: Oh, so it becomes the kind of white noise of smell in their background, and then they can distinguish between perfume smell still.
Lauren: Yeah. Which makes you realise just how clever human brains are.
Gretchen: Thatās good! Because if I make cookies or something, first, my apartment just smells like cookies, but then afterwards, if I leave and come back, Iām like, āOh, it still smells like cookies here.ā But if I stay in there, I stop noticing it.
Lauren: 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.
Gretchen: Ooh! I have other synaesthesias but not odour-colour.
Lauren: Yeah, weāve talked about synaesthesia a bit in other episodes. At its most basic itās where your brain takes in one sensory bit of information but also processes it as though itās another bit of sensory information. There are people who, when they smell things, register it as a particular colour.
Gretchen: 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, āIām picturing the thing that it smells like,ā and thatās probably not actually what the synaesthesia is involved.
Lauren: 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.
Gretchen: Interesting! Okay. Cool. Letās talk about some of these languages that actually do have more odour terms than English does.
Lauren: 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.
Gretchen: Right. One of these languages is Tepehua. Specifically, Huehuetla Tepehua, which I hope Iām pronouncing right but Iām 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 ā named after the town where itās spoken. Itās 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. Theyāre often smells you can kinda recognise but that in English we donāt have specific names for those specific smells.
Lauren: Awesome. Can we hear some of these smell groups?
Gretchen: Yeah. Itās a really interesting list because some of them are really delightful and some of them are really bad, and thereās really not much in between. Group Number 1, which is /Źuli/ or /kāuli/ or /skāuli/ ā thereāre all various different versions of that sound ā which is a delicious smell like flowers, or perfume, or floral, citrus. It isnāt just specifically a floral scent. It has this sort of positive connotation and this sort of rich, beautiful odour. But in contrast, thereās 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.
Lauren: Right.
Gretchen: I think this one may be a little bit more food-like.
Lauren: Bit more savoury.
Gretchen: Yeah! Theyāre both really good. Thereās another one, /kāus/, which is also a beautiful odour, but a slightly different beautiful odour. Again, English just doesnāt have the vocabulary for this. In contrast, thereās this Group 10, which is /ɬkih/, or /sŹeh/, or /ŹŹeh/, 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.
Lauren: Hmm, wow. That one definitely covers a gamut.
Gretchen: Yeah.
Lauren: Asifa also did some work with researchers who work on Chaāpalaa, 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 ā and some similar ones. Thereās one for things that are sweet-smelling or perfume, which is āpindyu,ā and then āandyuā is for fragrant and good food ā and like another positive term. The one that really caught me is the smell āchijdyu,ā which is the smell of burning hair.
Gretchen: Oh, wow. That was what this /ŹŹeh/ smell can also be burning plastic or burning hair, burning feathers, burning bones.
Lauren: Itās one of those smells that as soon as you smell it you just know if youāve ever accidentally put your hair too close to a hair dryer or near a fire. We donāt have a good word for it. We have the word āthe smell of burning hair.ā Itās not that we canāt smell it and we canāt describe it. Itās just that we literally use the word āhairā and āburningā to describe it. Whereas, these words donāt necessarily directly relate to those words.
Gretchen: Itās like the difference between saying āthe colour of strawberriesā and āred.ā You can still talk about the colour of strawberries but you donāt have a specific cover term that covers strawberries, and tomatoes, and apples, and fire engines, and these kinds of things.
Lauren: The really nifty thing about this is that they not only recorded the specific smell vocabulary items ā thereās about 14 so far recorded for Chaāpalaa ā but they also turn up more frequently in narratives than descriptions of smells in English in similar narratives.
Gretchen: Oh, thatās really neat. I also really enjoyed how sometimes they draw connections between smells that I wouldnāt have thought of as related. Then, when you say that, Iām like, āOh, yeah. These are related.ā 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 ā like calcium hydroxide, not like a lime citrus. One of the descriptions is itās so spicy or strong that itāll make you sneeze. Itās kind of grouping together something that I wouldnāt 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, āCan you translate these English words?ā is not necessarily a good way of doing smells in particular because English doesnāt have the word to translate necessarily. Instead, they used these tools called āSniffinā Sticks.ā Thereās no G there. Itās āSniffinā Sticks.ā
Lauren: The apostrophe there is very important.
Gretchen: Of course, when I looked it up on the website, like, āWhat are Sniffinā Sticks?ā
Lauren: I mean, we got really excited. We were like, āShould we have practiced this methodology ourselves? Should we get some of these and smell them?ā
Gretchen: Yeah! Sniffinā 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?
Lauren: We had those. But this is like those but more science.
Gretchen: Those but science, because they donāt smell like artificial cherry. They smell like real smells ā high quality smells ā and not always pleasant smells because you donāt just want a whole bunch of fake fruits. You want a bigger range.
Lauren: They also smell really consistently across all of the sticks and they have the same intensity of smell.
Gretchen: Yeah. Because I was thinking, well, maybe instead of buying the Sniffinā Sticks for ā¬200 from this website, maybe I could just make my own.
Lauren: This is where the plan came to a quick end.
Gretchen: It was like, āMaybe we should get some Sniffinā Sticks, Lauren.ā And then it was ā¬200. Later, āMaybe weāre not gonna get Sniffinā Sticks.ā 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. Theyāre for things sometimes that donāt necessarily have an essential oil associated with them. Some of the flavours include ā would you like a list of flavours?
Lauren: Sure.
Gretchen: Okay. Orange.
Lauren: Yum.
Gretchen: Leather.
Lauren: Hmm.
Gretchen: Cinnamon.
Lauren: Hmm.
Gretchen: Peppermint.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Gretchen: Banana.
Lauren: Hmm.
Gretchen: Lemon.
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: Liquorice.
Lauren: Okay.
Gretchen: Turpentine.
Lauren: Ooh... Actually, no. My mom used to do oil painting, so Iām very weirdly nostalgic about turpentine.
Gretchen: Okay. Garlic.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Gretchen: Coffee.
Lauren: Lovely.
Gretchen: Apple.
Lauren: Great.
Gretchen: Clove, pineapple, rose, fish.
Lauren: Gahhh.
Gretchen: This is the lunchroom smell. Flower in general. Like, I donāt know what the difference is between that and these specific flowers but, okay. Pear, like the fruit.
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: Cola. I guess like Coca-Cola or something? Lilac, /lÉÉŖlÉk/ ā how do people say this word? Iāve been corrected on this word before.
Gretchen: Yeah. Itās a really interesting list. Theyāre 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 donāt seem to be forcing people in the lab to smell skunk or rotting meat, which I think is very nice of them.
Lauren: Very kind.
Gretchen: There are some more savoury smells like smoked meat, and leather, and sesame oil, and stuff like that.
Lauren: Obviously, the Sniffinā Sticks have a lot of advantages in terms of the consistency, and theyāre portable and can be shared very easily. Apparently, they last for at least a year, according to the manufacturer.
Gretchen: So, itās more efficient than just getting a slice of lemon and putting it in a jar.
Lauren: Well, you say that, but thereās another smell research paper that I read ā and I have a summary of it on my blog from a few years ago, Iāll link to it ā but they were looking at whether people had an association between particular odours and colours, even if they werenāt 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.
Gretchen: Waft some smell. I mean, okay. I guess this works if you donāt have ā¬200 to buy some Sniffinā Sticks, you can get a lemon and put it in an empty spray bottle and spritz it.
Lauren: They did this to look at whether people associated particular colours with smells. When they recognised it, they would if it was ā 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 weāre smelling more than the smells independently. Whereas, Jahai speakers were much better at identifying smells. They use smell a lot. Theyāre hunter- gatherers. Itās much more part of their daily life skill set.
Gretchen: Have a very rich smell vocabulary.
Lauren: Yep.
Gretchen: I noticed on the Sniffinā Sticks website, which again I canāt quite get over, but they actually have a smell training kit.
Lauren: Oh, excellent!
Gretchen: Which contains four vials smelling like lemon, rose, eucalyptus, and clove. I donāt know why they picked those particular ones. I just wanna read you this description because itās really good. āThe 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.ā Of regularly sniffing these plastic vials.
Lauren: What? I mean, in that time you could just learn to speak Jahai.
Gretchen: You know, that oneās only ā¬49. Iām tempted, but I think maybe Iāll 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, youāre the one that suggested that we do an episode about smell. How did you get into smell?
Lauren: I mean, Iām always been a fan of our sniffersā work ā 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. Freestoneās Shadowscent fantasy series, which has been so much fun.
Gretchen: So, thereās a book that has a conlang in it, and you made the conlang?
Lauren: Correct.
Gretchen: Like, a smell conlang.
Lauren: 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 isnāt.
Gretchen: She came calling and said, āHey, can you help me with the language aspects of this bookā?
Lauren: 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.
Gretchen: Oh, yeah!
Lauren: Once you start doing linguistics, it can sometimes be ā I refer to this as the āKhaleesiā problem. When George R.R. Martin wrote Game of Thrones, the word āKhaleesiā ā itās 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, itās pronounced /xÉlÉÉŖsi/. But no English speaker pronounces it that way.
Gretchen: Right. English speakers who give their kids the name āKhaleesi,ā they donāt call them /xÉlÉÉŖsi/.
Lauren: Yeah.
Gretchen: 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.
Lauren: Yeah. David J. Peterson talks about the challenges of ā and the complexity of ā working with a series that was already multiple books in. Iāll 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.
Gretchen: Iāve read this book because itās available in the UK now. Even though it isnāt out in North America, you were able to send me a copy because itās coming out this month ā next month?
Lauren: In November.
Gretchen: Because itās coming out in November. I read it and I was expecting ā because you were talking about the language, like, āOh, every other page is gonna have full paragraphs of this language! Iām gonna have to do a lot of decoding in order to do this," which I was excited about, but also a bit nervous about.
Lauren: I feel like I would say Iām sorry to disappoint you, but actually, the book is such a great romp that we didnāt need to be held down with linguistic puzzles on every other page.
Gretchen: I mean, I enjoyed the story a lot. Clearly, thereās gotta be a lot of work that you put in behind the scenes that you donāt actually get to see in the pages of the book.
Lauren: The glacier is always a good metaphor for this kind of work where thereās 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.
Gretchen: Can you tell us ā 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 ā can you tell us more about whatās actually in this language that doesnāt necessarily appear in the pages?
Lauren: Sure. Thereās 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 Chaāpalaa 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. Thereās 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 doesnāt really exist when we look at what happens with smell in the worldās languages.
Gretchen: Oh, thatās so interesting! The sounds are pretty vanilla, to use a scent metaphor, but the words for smell ā like when we talked about these other languages that have these rich inventories of words for smell ā itās got a lot of these. It also does some stuff that natural languages, as far as we know, donāt do?
Lauren: Yes. One thing is I just made sure that there were lots of verbs for āto smell.ā Because in English was have ā you can āsmell,ā you can āsniff,ā but thereās not a really rich vocabulary.
Gretchen: You can āolfact.ā
Lauren: āTo olfact.ā I created a whole bunch of different verbs. Thereās only one verb for āto move.ā You donāt ārun.ā You donāt āwalk.ā You donāt āstroll.ā You just move. Thatās not very exciting. But I have verbs for āto smell something slowly for a long time,ā āto smell something by wafting it,ā āto accidentally smell something and then discover that itās disgusting and itās too late,ā which I feel like is a feeling weāve all had before, āto smell something that you can remember but you canāt immediately place.ā
Gretchen: Ooh! Like the tip of tongue phenomenon, but the tip of the nose phenomenon.
Lauren: Yeah. āTo smell something with great enthusiasm.ā
Gretchen: This is delightful.
Lauren: Iām always expanding. If there is any form of āto smell,ā I can create a word for it.
Gretchen: Hmm, okay. Iāll have to put my thinking cap on.
Lauren: If you have any particular forms of smelling, Iām always ā itās one of those areas of vocabulary that Iām just adding to all the time.
Gretchen: What about āto smell something and youāre not sure if itās disgusting or notā? Youāre like, āMaybe thatās a good smell. Maybe thatās a bad smell.ā Youāre just kind of smelling it experimentally.
Lauren: Hmm, yeah. You know what? Iām gonna add that.
Gretchen: 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 āis this disgusting or not?ā
Lauren: Itās one of those things where some people find the smell of durian or other really pungent fruit really pleasant and other people donāt. Some people have this moment of like, āUgh! I donāt know!ā Thatās a really great one. Iām gonna add that to the language.
Gretchen: Excellent. I feel so proud I had a contribution.
Lauren: Then, one of the other things that I did is we talked a lot about how all of our words for smells are like, āIt smells like burned hair,ā or āIt smells like an orange.ā As many of the vocabulary items as I could in the language are āthe smell.ā The basic vocabulary item is āthe smell of oranges.ā Then, you have to change that word to come up with āthe thing that smells like oranges.ā
Gretchen: Oh, wow! Okay. Thatās really interesting. If you wanna talk about actual oranges, you have to say, āthe thing that smells like oranges.ā
Lauren: Yes. Flipping the whole thing on its head.
Gretchen: Thatās great! Itās 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, āI witnessed this myself,ā āI heard it second-hand,ā āI deduced it from the available evidence.ā This seems like a really good place to introduce some sort of smell thing, right?
Lauren: 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 couldnāt resist putting grammatical evidentiality into this language.
Gretchen: For smell.
Lauren: But Aramteskan has an evidential system that does not exist, that we know of, in any human language.
Gretchen: Yes! Thank you for not disappointing me.
Lauren: A lot of human languages will have like, āI know because I sense this using any of my senses,ā or āI know this because I saw it,ā and then they might have another form that is used for all the other senses. In Aramteskan, we have āI know this because I smelt it,ā or āI know this because I used one of my other senses, which arenāt as important or interesting.ā This divide is definitely not ā I mean, I donāt think thereās any language weāve 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.
Gretchen: 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 ā or wafting from it.
Lauren: Yes. As well as the lovely wafting scent of printed books, if you buy the paper version.
Gretchen: Thatās true. There is that smell. Maybe thereās a language that has a better word for that. Maybe they could print it with those smell marker Sniffinā Sticks and then you could scratch and sniff the entire book. Have you thought about suggesting this to P. M. Freestone?
Lauren: Ah, it would be so amazing.
Gretchen: It would be really expensive, Iām sure. Pay ā¬200, get this scratch-and-sniff version of Shadowscent. This is not available. Iām making this up. But maybe this is something you could get.
Lauren: It would be so lovely. Even if you have to DIY the smell environment, Shadowscent: The Darkest Bloom, as itās known in the UK, is out there now. Shadowscent, as itās known in the US, is out November 5. It has a lovely hardback and a map in it in the US edition. Thatās gonna be super fancy. Book 2 will be out in 2020, I believe.
Gretchen: Cool. Iām looking forward to Book 2. Yeah, maybe Iāll just have to kind of DIY my own scent experience for the book.
[Music]
Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm, and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts, and you can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.
Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. My book is called Because Internet. It makes a great gift for anybody who might be interested in internet language in your life. To listen to bonus episodes and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Recent bonus topics include surnames, metaphors, and a Q&A with me about Because Internet, if you wanna know behind the scenes how it was to write. Canāt afford to pledge? Thatās okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life ā especially this month, if you want to say something interesting that you enjoy sharing from a Lingthusiasm episode, and then we can share it with other people, and people can discover the podcast that way.
Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our editorial manager is Emily Gref, our theme music is āAncient Citiesā by The Triangles.
Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!
[Music]
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