article_snippet: But it turns out it may be us language that is hampering us sense of smell.
article_snippet: Scientists have found that English speakers struggle to identify and describe odours compared to other languages.
article_snippet: The English language is not the best for describing odours say scientists .
article_snippet: Researchers found those who use English as Researchers first language can take five times as long to describe an odour than Researchers can a colour.
article_snippet: The findings suggest English speakers appear to have lost the ability to accurately describe smells.
article_snippet: Professor Asifa Majid, who led the work at the centre for language studies at Radboud University in Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, said: 'The findings show that the long-held assumption that people are bad at naming smells is not universally true. '
article_snippet: It is unclear exactly why English speakers have lost the ability to describe smells accurately, but vision has become the predominant sense in almost all human cultures.
article_snippet: In a recent study published in the journal of Cognitive Linguistics, Professor Majid and her colleagues found that English speakers use specific words for vision and hearing but have few for the other senses like touch, smell and taste.
highlights_snippet: English speakers  take five times longer to describe an odour than a colour .
  