Synesthesia and Language

Hi folks.

I finally handed in the two papers I had to do. Next semester I am thinking of signing up for Men, Women & Language, although I doubt there will be space left. I get last dibs as a visiting student, so usually full-timers take up all the spaces.

I heard that Georgetown and Gallaudet are consortium schools, along with some other schools in the area. I would love to take an ASL Phonology course or something at Gallaudet. Both of my professors were unintentionally very spoken-language-oriented, so it'd be nice to balance it out a bit. Even though one of my textbooks did use sign language examples throughout, my professor didn't mention them in the course. I think the main reason is because most people don't know that much about signed languages to begin with, and so professors don't want to teach what they don't know much about.

Anyway, I also want to learn Tactile ASL (TASL). It's a modified form of ASL used by and for DeafBlind people. It's also cool cause the situations you can use it in are even more varied than ASL. ASL can be used at school assemblies, while SCUBA diving, etc. But with TASL you can also communicate with someone under the covers or at a concert where it's too loud for speech and too dark for signing.

Another thing I wanted to discuss is language and synesthesia. Synesthesia is when the senses cross over in the brain. There are different types, such as grapheme-color (where words or letters evoke certain colors--also the most common), auditory-visual (seeing sounds), gustatory-visual (tasting colors), anthropomorphic (where objects have personalities), etc. There are all kinds of synesthesia. I was interested in wondering how it intersects with language. I know some synesthetes experience tastes from certain sounds, for example /k/ will be bitter and /s/ will be creamy. 

My color-grapheme synesthesia: A is red, E is yellow, O is a creamy white, I is a silvery white, and U is a deep blue. F and N are slightly different shades of green. H is indigo, or sometimes brown if combined with T (TH) or S (SH). Words are colored by their vowels and sometimes the first letter, if the first letter has a color. "Bike" is white bleeding into yellow. "Piano" is silvery white bleeding into red bleeding into creamy white. 

The corresponding sounds also have colors. The /a/ sound in father is tomato red. The /u/ sound in "food" is blue (even though the O's are white.) /m/ sound is blue, /n/ is green. 

And music has its own colors for me. A in writing is red but in music the note A is a fuchsia color. Middle C is white, D is blue, E flat is yolky yellow, natural E is a sunflower color. F is a yellowy green although a major 7 F chord (F, A, C, E) is jade green. F# is a deep forest green. G is red, B is a bluish gray whereas B flat is a slightly yellow-tinted slate gray. D flat is a shimmering light blue. 

So how does this relate to language? Well I was wondering if synesthesia helps to distinguish sounds.  For example, many people get confused because they think of C as a letter, e.g. come and celebrate. However, a synesthete might have different flavors or colors associated with the /k/ in come and the /s/ in celebrate, helping them realize that the C is pronounced differently. 

Also, synesthesia helps me with spelling. Common mistakes like spelling separately seperately and definitely definately makes no sense to me, because I clearly see that A as red and so I know it can't be seperately because that's yellow. And definately looks wrong because there's red in the middle that shouldn't be there--definitely is usually yellow and silvery white. 

I am familiar with lots of alphabets, and all the alphabets I know have some colors, although the strongest colors are in the Latin alphabet and also vowels across alphabets in general. In Farsi, ت (teh) is a cherry red, the Hebrew dalet is a muted yellow green, the Russian Я (ya) is pink, the Braille N is olive green, the Chinese character 覺 is a deep dark blue green. The fingerspelled alphabet in ASL is the same as the corresponding letters in English when I'm fingerspelling a word, but when the same handshape is used in a word, it has a different color. For example, the F handshape is green like in English when fingerspelling something, but the sign JUDGMENT (which is made with the double F handshape) is a shimmering yellow. 

I think my synesthesia helps me keep track of my alphabets and languages. It also helps me know the key of a song when I'm listening to it because I know that if a song is predominately blue I know it's in D. And then if I know that there are notes of green it's D minor but if the green is darker and purer then it's D major. Minor tonality has muted earthy colors, major tonality has brighter colors. And tonalities such as dorian or phrygian have a mix of muted and bright colors.

Do you have synesthesia? Does it help you memorize things? Maybe it helps you in math because various symbols are colored or have flavors? Do your senses get overloaded when your exposed to a lot of stimuli, e.g. at a concert?

I also want to note that synesthesia is often painted as just a benefit, but it's not necessarily. Sometimes my senses are overwhelmed. Sometimes if I see something and the color and letter don't match, I get an unpleasant feeling. Sometimes I'll be listening to music and I see these beautiful colors and then a track comes in with an ugly color and messes it up. When people are too loud or there is too much noise going on, I get overloaded. So just keep in mind that being synesthetic is just another way of being, and it's not a plus or a minus. It just is what it is.