So Many Words for Texture and Mouthfeel

Some countries and cultures have a large number of words to describe texture and mouthfeel, while others have relatively few. It is hard to come up with a definite number, because words may have more than one meaning. Surveys have shown that the language with the richest vocabulary for texture is Japanese, with 406 discrete terms. In Austria, 105 words are used; in the United States, there were only 78. Despite these huge differences, there is a certain number that are common across many languages, which demonstrates that texture is an important concept in all parts of the world.