sidetracks
I've spent large parts of today absorbed in Wikipedia. It started by a bit of Livejournal profile-hopping, until I hit upon someone's profile which mentioned the "Kinsey Scale", wandered off to Wikipedia to find out what that was [it's to do with sexuality, for anyone else as ignorant as me], and ended up on the article about the Third Gender. From there, I went off on tangents to various cultures, ancient mythology and explorers. I want to be an explorer!
Anyway, I realised two (possibly three) things. One is that, even though I can't pack more than about two books to take to Russia, I won't run out of interesting English-language reading material as long as I have the internet. The other is that a Masters in some sort of anthropology would be hopelessly self-indulgent, but no less tempting for that. The possible third thing is that I must finish off my India/fairytale story from last year's Nano.
I drew out the alphabet in my diary and attempted to colour it in. It didn't work entirely as expected. So I wrote down everything I knew about my synaesthesia. Here it is, for interest:
Ever tried writing down your dreams? It's never straightforward, getting what's in your head down on paper. Much the same with synaesthesia.
The first problem is that not eery letter has a colour. I think a strictly-grapheme synaesthete would disagree, but for me, it's every word that has a colour. And for that, you don't need a full palate. (Misspelling intended.)
The second problem is that some colours - black, in particular, are more, well, feelings. Contrast "colour", where several of the letters have strong personalities, and the overall effect of 'o' is just to darken the word as a whole ('c' is ordinarily a pale pink, but quite vibrant in this case) - I don't think the 'o's should even show as black, but then, I don't know what they should show as - with "words", where 'o' is almost the only letter with a personality, so does show as a colour.
Observations
- A [grey]; C [pale pink]; E [yellow]; I [blue]; J [orange]; O [black]; U [orange] and W [dark green] have very dominant personalities and colour a whole word;
- B [blue] has a fairly dominant personality, but if its colour clashes with the rest of a word (like "blue", which is - ha! - predominantly orange), it disappears.
- V is ice blue and steely grey, like 5. It's possibly the only letter with a texture [metal] instead of / as well as a colour.
- H [green] is like B. It is more likely to show its colour if it's not at the start of a word.
- R [deep red] is interesting. It's got a fairly strong personality, but ... see Pairs.
- S [white] and maybe N [hint of orange] are the next step down, with weaker personalities than B.
- N has hints of orange. Other letters have even fainter hints: k -?blackgrey; m - yellow; l - orange; t - pink; y - bright yellow. These only come out when the context is right ('l' in "colour" shows as orange, cos the whole word is up that bit of the spectrum.)
- D, F, P, Z have no colour. G, Q, X might, but it's like an itch at the back of my mind, hardly perceptible.
- Letters - consonants particularly, colourless letters definitely - serve as a frame to paint on. Words as a whole have texture as well as colour. Some are soft, some metal, material, wooden ...
- Colouring the alphabet with pencil was better than felt pen, but not as good as watercolour would be. Colours from dominant personalities "bleed" into the whole word.
- 'O' darkens the overall colour of a word, whereas 'E' sharpens it. I think this is only when 'E' comes after a strong personality.
- Some pairs of letters have distinct colours: EI [green]; OU [about the same dark orange/ brown as 9]; OI [glittering, iridescent blue-black - probably associated with 'oil']; CH [very pastel pale pink]; IE [strong blue]; UE [strong orange]. Vowel+R - R loses its colour, but the colour of the vowel also changes.
- Although I say "personality", I'm just using it to indicate how dominant a letter is. Beyond that, they don't have character, unlike some people's!
Also, sounds have their own colour, texture and shape. This applies mostly to voices, and to pieces of music.
I tend to avoid describing people's voices, because it could come across as offensive. "You sound like a copper pipe with a lime green tint and a dent in the top right as I'm looking at it." That's somebody I know, she's very pleasant to listen to. There was also a newsreader on the late night news at one point, who sounded like a hazard-yellow wooden box you could catch splinters off. I couldn't listen to her.
People's voices can change colour between speaking and singing, or even lose their colour - which is weird.
And in response to a friend's comment:
"The are some override mechanisms for words like "red"; it should technically be green."
I don't think I have any of those override mechanisms. "Red" is yellow for me.
It sounds like you also have override mechanisms for the numbers in English - yes? That is, the word and the figure are the same colour (although this changes in foreign)? Again, haven't got that: "three" is very yellow, "3" is indisputably red, "drei" is lime greenish, "trois" is bubbly purply blue, Russian "tri" is yellow/blue, but written down it's purple. Um. Wow. Hadn't thought about any of that before.
One thing that can confuse me is transliteration. A word written in Cyrillic isn't always the same colour as its transliteration. I think the same happens where I get mental blocks with numbers - 'sixty' is blueish, but there's nothing more orange than 60. Hmm.
Anyway, I realised two (possibly three) things. One is that, even though I can't pack more than about two books to take to Russia, I won't run out of interesting English-language reading material as long as I have the internet. The other is that a Masters in some sort of anthropology would be hopelessly self-indulgent, but no less tempting for that. The possible third thing is that I must finish off my India/fairytale story from last year's Nano.
I drew out the alphabet in my diary and attempted to colour it in. It didn't work entirely as expected. So I wrote down everything I knew about my synaesthesia. Here it is, for interest:
Ever tried writing down your dreams? It's never straightforward, getting what's in your head down on paper. Much the same with synaesthesia.
The first problem is that not eery letter has a colour. I think a strictly-grapheme synaesthete would disagree, but for me, it's every word that has a colour. And for that, you don't need a full palate. (Misspelling intended.)
The second problem is that some colours - black, in particular, are more, well, feelings. Contrast "colour", where several of the letters have strong personalities, and the overall effect of 'o' is just to darken the word as a whole ('c' is ordinarily a pale pink, but quite vibrant in this case) - I don't think the 'o's should even show as black, but then, I don't know what they should show as - with "words", where 'o' is almost the only letter with a personality, so does show as a colour.
Observations
- A [grey]; C [pale pink]; E [yellow]; I [blue]; J [orange]; O [black]; U [orange] and W [dark green] have very dominant personalities and colour a whole word;
- B [blue] has a fairly dominant personality, but if its colour clashes with the rest of a word (like "blue", which is - ha! - predominantly orange), it disappears.
- V is ice blue and steely grey, like 5. It's possibly the only letter with a texture [metal] instead of / as well as a colour.
- H [green] is like B. It is more likely to show its colour if it's not at the start of a word.
- R [deep red] is interesting. It's got a fairly strong personality, but ... see Pairs.
- S [white] and maybe N [hint of orange] are the next step down, with weaker personalities than B.
- N has hints of orange. Other letters have even fainter hints: k -?blackgrey; m - yellow; l - orange; t - pink; y - bright yellow. These only come out when the context is right ('l' in "colour" shows as orange, cos the whole word is up that bit of the spectrum.)
- D, F, P, Z have no colour. G, Q, X might, but it's like an itch at the back of my mind, hardly perceptible.
- Letters - consonants particularly, colourless letters definitely - serve as a frame to paint on. Words as a whole have texture as well as colour. Some are soft, some metal, material, wooden ...
- Colouring the alphabet with pencil was better than felt pen, but not as good as watercolour would be. Colours from dominant personalities "bleed" into the whole word.
- 'O' darkens the overall colour of a word, whereas 'E' sharpens it. I think this is only when 'E' comes after a strong personality.
- Some pairs of letters have distinct colours: EI [green]; OU [about the same dark orange/ brown as 9]; OI [glittering, iridescent blue-black - probably associated with 'oil']; CH [very pastel pale pink]; IE [strong blue]; UE [strong orange]. Vowel+R - R loses its colour, but the colour of the vowel also changes.
- Although I say "personality", I'm just using it to indicate how dominant a letter is. Beyond that, they don't have character, unlike some people's!
Also, sounds have their own colour, texture and shape. This applies mostly to voices, and to pieces of music.
I tend to avoid describing people's voices, because it could come across as offensive. "You sound like a copper pipe with a lime green tint and a dent in the top right as I'm looking at it." That's somebody I know, she's very pleasant to listen to. There was also a newsreader on the late night news at one point, who sounded like a hazard-yellow wooden box you could catch splinters off. I couldn't listen to her.
People's voices can change colour between speaking and singing, or even lose their colour - which is weird.
And in response to a friend's comment:
"The are some override mechanisms for words like "red"; it should technically be green."
I don't think I have any of those override mechanisms. "Red" is yellow for me.
It sounds like you also have override mechanisms for the numbers in English - yes? That is, the word and the figure are the same colour (although this changes in foreign)? Again, haven't got that: "three" is very yellow, "3" is indisputably red, "drei" is lime greenish, "trois" is bubbly purply blue, Russian "tri" is yellow/blue, but written down it's purple. Um. Wow. Hadn't thought about any of that before.
One thing that can confuse me is transliteration. A word written in Cyrillic isn't always the same colour as its transliteration. I think the same happens where I get mental blocks with numbers - 'sixty' is blueish, but there's nothing more orange than 60. Hmm.