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Most Enjoyable Language | ||
Tags: Synesthesia | Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5364 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 17 of 60 22 January 2011 at 6:08am | IP Logged | |||||
Are you crazy? French is the greenest language there is! :) Italian is also green, though less so. Spanish is orange-yellow, as is Mandarin. German is...hard to describe, I would say the colors of a cloudy autumn day with the leaves at their most brilliant. Russian is as pure white as the Siberian snow. Portuguese is deep violet. English, if it has a color, is pink (but it's my native tongue so I don't even pay attention to it most of the time and it doesn't have a color). The joys of being a synesthete and a language nerd are a wonderful combination indeed! Edited by Levi on 22 January 2011 at 6:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6665 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 18 of 60 22 January 2011 at 6:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm siding more with ReneeMona about French. The Romance languages are all quite multicolored, but French is darker shade, and not as chaotic about the bits of color flying around. Spanish is the most chaotic and much brighter than French.
German is very dark colored though, very much like a forest, so in this case I'm more with Levi. It's very calm and still. This is the defining characteristic of most of the Germanic languages that I've heard: their structure and solidity whereas the Romance languages in my mind's eye are like a tornado of confetti. Other languages have similar characteristics: for example Finnish is a very beautiful blue, a very solid color, rather translucent. It's very calm, like German, but not related at all. However, I haven't studied much Finnish so that's as far as I can go with it. :-) I also am not sure about English. I think it's whitish with some colors mixed underneath, like sprinkles underneath white frosting, but I suspect that's because I can't get a fix on my own native language. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5939 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 19 of 60 22 January 2011 at 7:12am | IP Logged | |||||
No, no, no. You've both got it all wrong! French varies between being a beautiful turquoise blue and a delicate pink. Italian is definitely a bright and/or olive green, but a light brown is also very fitting. Spanish is something like bright pink, red, and orange, all at the same time. Mandarin is very difficult for me to classify, but probably something like red or orange. German is a deep purple and maybe some dark green, but it has something else too (I agree with Levi that it's hard to describe). Russian is somewhere between bright pink and purple (maybe magenta or fuschia?), but also having lovely flashes of blue and white. Portuguese is bright green, but can also be orange, or even purple. English is a light yellow with the occasional blue. Now to add some more of my own that weren't mentioned before... Greek is without a doubt blue, pure blue, nothing but blue, beautiful blue. Romanian is orange and purple (but not both at once!), but...there's something else, like with German. Dutch is a nice little sea green that makes you want to splash around in it. Swedish is a bit odd, because at first glance it's a soft lavender but also very vibrant at the same time. Overall, Japanese is almost 100% crimson, but black suits the written language very well while the spoken language could be represented with a playful yellow or blue (hard to describe). Swahili is an awesome mix of yellow, orange, pink, and green. Persian is well represented by both a dark green and brown. Polish is a very "plump" pink (I have a feeling that makes no sense at all, but probably something similar to Russian) but also having some light blue. Arabic is a mix of bright yellow, deep green, and blue. Finnish is a very light blue with touches of silver, lavender, and yellow. Czech is blue and red. Esperanto is bright yellow. Georgian is dark green and maroon. Turkish is a mix of purple, green, and orange. Hungarian is very red or orange, but it also has green and purple. Hebrew is blue and purple, varying between very light and very dark shades. Welsh is a mix of dark blue and dark green with the occasional ripple of another color. Ahh! So many colors! I think I'll stop before I get even more carried away and hurt myself. EDIT: Just read Journeyer's post, which wasn't there when I started writing this (did I really just spend over 30 minutes assembling these colors!?), and I very much agree with his/her conclusions. Very well put indeed. Edited by ellasevia on 22 January 2011 at 7:18am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5132 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 20 of 60 22 January 2011 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This is excellent! I didn’t know we had this many synaesthetes on the forum. I love synaesthetic discussions because we know we’re never going to convince each other yet we bicker on anyway. ;-)
As for French, I stand by what I said before but I will admit it has some green in it. The Romance languages generally have some yellow/red/orange in them while the Germanic languages are usually blue/white/grey and tend to be darker. Spanish is very bright yellow, Portuguese is a beautiful dark blue/purple colour, like an aubergine, and Romanian is a combination of heavy dark red and a kind of rusty red brownish colour. English is grey and white with some bright yellow and the written language is very spiky. German is grey and marine blue and much heavier than most languages. Dutch is blue but the written language has a lot of grey and brown in it. Swedish is like melted butter and powdered sugar, Danish is baby blue and Norwegian is dark blue with some white and red, very pretty. Russian is watered-down red with a little light purple and some grey. Arabic is very warm orange and brown and the alphabet is caramel. I love Finnish, because it’s grass green and the written language is square. Hebrew is different shades of warm brown and the alphabet is very dark brown, almost black. Naming the colour and structure of a language is quite hard because there are so many factors that influence it and it’s hard to find the right words to describe it. Most of these colours I mentioned are based on their English names, which means they might be a different colour in another language, especially when the difference is as big as with Dutch/Nederlands and German/Deutsch. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5469 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 21 of 60 22 January 2011 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am green with envy.
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| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6665 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 22 of 60 22 January 2011 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I should probably say in the spirit of this thread that as much as I love bright and shiny colors, when it comes to languages, I prefer more structure in their personalities rather than "whoo hoo let's all getz crazy!" action that I see in others, but specifically the Romance languages I haven't studied many others outside of this family that are like that. Therefore I am drawn more to languages that seem more firm and orderly, like the Germanic, like Finnish, like Arabic (I think, although it is colorful and maybe a little crazy :-) ) Those are the languages I enjoy the most.
I will say though that when I speak Spanish, I do feel more loosened up. I'm not sure of that's because how it appears to me, or because I learned it in very informal environments, or both. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 5837 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 23 of 60 22 January 2011 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I love listening to vietnamese it always reminds me of water the way it flows and glides through the tones. It always makes me smile
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| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 5902 days ago 707 posts - 1219 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 24 of 60 22 January 2011 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Very interesting topic.
1) The synaesthesia examples mentioned here of are a SOUND <-> VISION pathway. However, can anyone TASTE a language? I'd be very interested to know what Polish tastes like! To me, as a non-synaesthete, I'm guessing it tastes of something sweet, sticky and fruity. 2)Some synaesthetes have a NUMERICAL <-> COLOUR pathway, for example 7 = yellow. 3)There's also a VISION <-> TASTE pathway. My favourite example is by the artist Phillipa Stanton who visualised the taste of English mustard: http://www.philippastanton.com/?wsid=philipastanton&page=gal lery&&col_id=20&image_id=249 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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