Are there any languages or dialects not distinguishing between taste and smell?
Possible duplicate of this older and much more general question.
-
English for one subsumes smell under taste, insofar taste is mostly perceived by the nose, except for the four or five basic tastes sour, salt, sweet, bitter (and umami/meat), as the common knowledge goes.– vectoryNov 4, 2019 at 6:08
-
3@vectory: Languages or dialects having only one word for both these senses.– LucianNov 4, 2019 at 6:13
-
1Mandarin uses the same word for smelling and hearing (闻 wén, although there’s also 听 tīng used only for hearing or listening), which isn’t quite the same but seems somehow related.– Janus Bahs JacquetMay 16, 2021 at 13:11
-
@JanusBahsJacquet: Etymological explanation.– LucianMay 16, 2021 at 13:52
-
1@JanusBahsJacquet Interesting! The same happens in the Slavic languages: en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/слышать where, in Russian, slyshat' is for hearing and, colloquially, for smelling, feeling a smell (more literary is chujat'), and very opposite case in Slovene, where čúti (cognate for chujat') & slíšati are both for hearing.– T1ntsMay 18, 2021 at 7:46
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
The OHG form of the modern German schmecken "taste" could mean both "taste" and "smell". This is, as the Grimms note, still preserved in Upper German dialects; I have myself heard it being used for "smell" in Lungau, a southern part of Salzburg, where the dialect is somewhat in the middle between South and Middle Bavarian.
-
1The anecdote is acually quite funny. I, non-dialect L1 Austrian German speaker, was talking to a farmer in Lungau about silo hay, and he told me "schmecks amal", whereupon I tasted a piece of hay, and he was rather perplexed about my reaction. May 17, 2021 at 11:35
-