From Mike Collins
I found it difficult to grasp that some languages have only five words to
describe colours, until I realised that we ourselves have no words at all to
represent different smells.
For us, smells are said to be “like” something. So that when the man from the
council comes round, we tell him that the smell is like rotten eggs. He
understands this and does not wander around searching for long-forgotten eggs.
In fact, I bet that most of us have never actually smelt a rotten egg, yet we still
use it as a description.
Leeds
