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Language Colors | ||
Tags: Synesthesia | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5652 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes  Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 17 of 31 12 April 2010 at 9:43am | IP Logged |
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Dear iknowchristalen--
Go wild with the colored lights and let us know how it works for you. (Although I think red ink, for example will disappear under red light.) I have beside the desk where I'm typing this a shelf with nine reams of colored paper, each a different color, and each of which originally had 500 sheets. It is very gratifying to see those reams shrink over time. Each day becomes a passage through the rainbow. The danger is that it's too much fun to start another language simply to be able to use another combination of colors for paper and folder! (I'm not using all nine yet.) Conversely, I haven't done anything with Turkish lately and the stack of goldenrod paper is staring at me with contempt and dismay. Oh, the guilt! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6869 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 18 of 31 18 April 2010 at 12:35am | IP Logged |
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I also see languages in terms of colors and textures. It's not just language but sounds and tones in general. For example people with different voices have different colors in my head. Lower voices are darker. I wouldn't say it's black or brown, I just sense it as darker. But I see textures, as well. Sounds have shape, points, are smooth, calm, dart around, appear and disappear, etc.
And this all comes out to languages. Every language I come across have a dominate color, but ultimately is made up of many colors. The Romance languages are among the most colorful, since vowels tend to be the brightest and most eye-catching colors. I imagine Hindu and Japanese would be similar, but I haven't heard enough of them to get a good visualization of them. The Germanic languages are a lot darker and calmer, whereas the Romance languages (and Esperanto) have a lot more active energy. In my opinion, this seems to be reflective of how I perceive the cultures, too. In Mexico and Peru, both where I've lived, the cultures seem to be much more active and in-your-face, for want of a better term. Germany, where I've also lived, is active as well, but at a level that for me was much calmer, and so the imagery in my head is not as chaotic. It's easier for me to get a fix on, and I think this is part of the reason why I am very attracted to the Germanic languages. I don't know how, or even if, the imagery in my head would change if my impression of the cultures changed, but I also think a lot of it is simply passed on sound and the energy that the language is spoken. At least some of it is almost certainly inspired from the obvious: For example, the various [r] sounds, be it in Spanish or German or whichever, is some variety of the color red. Norwegian is a very red language, both for the "r" in the language's name and, I suspect, for the flag. Somehow the association has stuck, and since red is my favorite color, Norwegian is one of the languages that gives me the best impressions. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 19 of 31 03 May 2010 at 3:30am | IP Logged |
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I found out I have several forms of synesthesia a couple of months ago and I'm now a member of a forum for synaesthetes where people have mentioned using their experiences (especially grapheme-colour ones) to memorize languages. People with synaesthesia are also said to be good at languages and at spelling. It's really a remarkable condition that manifests differently in everyone who has it.
As for myself, I see just about everything in colour in my mind; letters, numbers, days of the week, months, geometrical shapes, alphabets, countries etc. Many of them have genders and personalities as well. My strongest form is grapheme-colour synesthesia which is why the colour of a language for me is always based on it's name or it's written form. English: white-grey French: orange-brown Dutch: blue-white Spanish: yellow Greek: perfectly white, the alphabet also has a wonderful lightness about it. Russian: sort of pinkish-wine-red. German: greyish-blue. Arabic: orange (but the script is brown) Hebrew: brown Polish: navy blue Portuguese: purple Finnish: green Edited by ReneeMona on 17 June 2010 at 1:21pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6869 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 20 of 31 11 May 2010 at 7:08pm | IP Logged |
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ReneeMona, what is the website you mentioned, please? I'd be interested in seeing how I can get it to help me, because so far I haven't found any good methods. Also, I want to find out if synesthesia can be exercised and strengthened, or if some people always certain levels of perception of it for good.
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| cameroncrc Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6518 days ago 195 posts - 185 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Ukrainian | Message 21 of 31 17 May 2010 at 1:28pm | IP Logged |
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It's interesting to see that there are others out there that associate languages with colors, I though I was the only one! Here's mine:
French: Blue Spanish: Red-orange German: Brown Italian: Green Dutch: Yellow Sign Language: Red Finnish: Green and Blue Swedish: Red 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 22 of 31 17 May 2010 at 3:18pm | IP Logged |
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Some people do experience changes in their synaesthesia over time, in that repeatedly seeing certain colors
associated with certain things can affect what colors you see in your mind. I've had that happen with a few of my music syns- for example, horns sound gold to me (from the brass color of the instrument) while flutes sound silvery (but still mixed with white and pale blue). I've strongly associated Irish music with dark green as well, although because of the fiddles there's a lot of brown in it. Pianos are the one instrument that can represent any color at all in my mind, depending on how it's being played. Staccato tends to result in bolder colors, for example. Almost all my favorite music is in blue, green, and white tones, although lately I've liked more brown music. As far as languages, I strongly associate French with the color of blue on the French flag; Japanese with bold red because I used to keep my Japanese papers in a red folder; and interestingly, Esperanto with yellow and parchment, the yellow from its similarity to Spanish, which is yellow for me, and the parchment from the background of this website! :) I also suspect that my association of German with olive green and black comes from WW2 imagery. The others I have don't seem to correlate to anything in real life; for example, Yiddish is brown, ASL is red, Chinese is pink and purple, Korean is spring green, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iknowchristalen Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5344 days ago 20 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Japanese | Message 23 of 31 18 May 2010 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
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Thank you everyone for taking the time to answer this post. I am very interested it the different colors everyone seems to have associated with different languages. Not many have been the same but French I think wins with three blues so far. An update on the lights, i got a six color light fixture at a flee market for 2 Euro, though once i got it home the red light burned out (which is my German color and the language i need to study the most right now.) And unfortunately Germany is only selling energy saving/ led light bulbs and these things are light the size of outdoor Christmas lights, though i think they might sell something like that in the Netherlands...
Edited by iknowchristalen on 18 May 2010 at 12:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 24 of 31 18 May 2010 at 10:34pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Iknowchristalen,
If you can get ahold of colored plastic wrap, it makes a fairly effective colored light filter that you can use with a regular white light. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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