“There is a tribe of hunter-gatherers from Malaysia—the Jahai—with over a dozen words dedicated to the sense of smell. One in particular is ‘ltpit,’ which stands for the animalic pungency of a bearcat, a scent reminiscent of popcorn and also of durian. The word refers to an olfactive quality that we have yet to identify in the English language, a sensorial experience too infrequent to be deemed a linguistic necessity. The disparity between their scent culture and ours saddens me: to speak a language is to exist within its confines. I cannot dwell in this thought for long before feeling a blistering surge of envy.”