But not all of us. In Southeast Asia, there are at least two groups of hunter-gatherers who would turn their noses up at this textbook view. Asifa Majid from Radboud University in the Netherlands has found that the Jahai people of Malaysia and the Maniq of Thailand use between 12 and 15 dedicated smell words.

“These terms are really very salient to them,” she says. “They turn up all the time. Young children know them. They're basic vocabulary. They're not used for taste, or general ideas of edibility. They're really dedicated to smell.”

For example, ltpit describes the smell of a binturong or bearcat—a two-meter-long animal that looks like a shaggy, black-furred otter, and that famously smells of popcorn. But ltpit doesn't mean popcorn—it's not a source-based term. The same word is also used for soap, flowers, and the intense-smelling durian fruit, referring to some fragrant quality that Western noses can’t parse.

Another word is used for the smell of petrol, smoke, bat droppings, some species of millipede, the root of wild ginger, the wood of wild mango, and more. One seems specific to roasted foods. And one refers to things like squirrel blood, rodents, crushed head lice, and other “bloody smells that attract tigers.”

These terms don't refer to general qualities that are the dominion of other senses, like edibility. “Their meaning is not general over tastes, textures, pain, or any other state; their business is smell,” says Majid. “Just as you would describe a tomato as red, a Jahai speaker would describe the smell of bearcat as ltpit.”

Majid first heard about the Jahai through her colleague Niclas Burenhult, who had been working with them for years and had written the only formal grammar of their language. He noticed that they had specific smell words and, in disbelief, she flew out to Malaysia to investigate.

She talked to them, got to know their language, and learned about their culture. She tried them on the Brief Smell Identification Test—essentially a standardized scratch-and-sniff test with some fixed smells. She went on jungle walks with them, and asked them to describe the smells of their environment. And through several tests, she showed that they can name smells as consistently, easily, and clearly as English speakers can name colors, with none of the verbal struggles or linguistic somersaults that Westerners go through. The same applies to the Maniq.

These two groups clearly show that odors, contrary to popular belief, are not universally ineffable. “This work has changed my views!” says Tim Jacob from Cardiff University. “Smell information translates straight into behavior or mood and evokes whole memories,” he says. “Smell doesn't need language. That is what I thought. But, clearly there are cultures who have developed a smell vocabulary and it is both useful and necessary.”