Grapheme–color synesthesia?
Printed From: How-to-learn-any-language.com
Forum Name: Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies
Forum Discription: All about flash cards, LR, shadowing and other methods used to learn languages on your own.
URL: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=29374
Printed Date: 07 May 2021 at 9:11am
Posted By: Doitsujin
Subject: Grapheme–color synesthesia?
Date Posted: 10 September 2011 at 10:25am
I'm toying with idea of writing a very simple vocabulary learning tool that'll color-code each letter of a word to somewhat mimic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme-color_synesthesia - Grapheme–color synesthesia ; I'd like to find out whether it'll help me to better visualize and memorize the words that I want to learn.
I'm obviously not a synesthete, but, IIRC, some HTLAL members are. I've got a couple of questions for the synesthetes among you:
1. Do you see similar sounds in different shades of the same color?
For example, do you see a P and B or an S and Z as a light and dark orange letters?
2. Do you associate warm and cold colors with a certain group of letters?
For example, do you see all consonants as cold colors and all vowels/diphthongs as warm letters or vice versa?
|
Replies:
Doitsujin wrote:
1. Do you see similar sounds in different shades of the same color?
For example, do you see a P and B or an S and Z as a light and dark orange letters?
|
|
|
Yes. Voiced-voiceless combinations are usually different shades of the same color, with
f-v being green, t-d being blue, p-b being brown and s-z being yellow.
Quote:
2. Do you associate warm and cold colors with a certain group of letters?
For example, do you see all consonants as cold colors and all vowels/diphthongs as warm
letters or vice versa? |
|
|
No, both groups have both warm and cool colors. For instance, n is blue while m is
yellow and a is orange while u is grey.
I hope that was helpful. Good luck with your experiment! I've heard of people trying to
recreate synesthetic associations before and I'm interested to hear if it'll work for
you.
ReneeMona on 10 September 2011
|
Doitsujin wrote:
1. Do you see similar sounds in different shades of the same color?
For example, do you see a P and B or an S and Z as a light and dark orange letters?
2. Do you associate warm and cold colors with a certain group of letters?
For example, do you see all consonants as cold colors and all vowels/diphthongs as warm letters or vice versa?
|
|
|
No and yes, though I believe this is due to the origin of my synesthetic associations. While the colors I associate with numbers and punctuation marks seem to be random, my letter-color associations were clearly influenced by a magnetic alphabet set I had as a child. For me:
A = red
B = orange
C = yellow
D = green
E = black
F = green
G = red
H = orange
I = yellow
J = green
K = green
L = purple
M = red
N = orange
O = yellow
P = green
Q = green
R = purple
S = blue
T = orange
U = yellow
V = green
W = gray
X = purple
Y = red
Z = purple
The original magnet set simply repeated the colors red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple, though for whatever reason some of the color associations have changed for me. Anyhow, the pattern is still clearly there, so my associations don't really have anything to do with the letters' pronunciations. P and B are completely unrelated, and five of the six vowels are "warm" colors but only by coincidence.
Levi on 10 September 2011
|
ReneeMona wrote:
| I've heard of people trying to recreate synesthetic associations before and I'm interested to hear if it'll work for you. |
|
|
Thanks for your post. Do you happen to remember how those attempts turned out?
Levi wrote:
| While the colors I associate with numbers and punctuation marks seem to be random, my letter-color associations were clearly influenced by a magnetic alphabet set I had as a child. |
|
|
Very interesting. What happens if you hear sounds that don't correspond to a single letter in the English alphabet (e.g. German "ch" /x/ or Russian "ж" /ʐ/)? Do you associate them with two colors or no color at all?
Doitsujin on 10 September 2011
|
I don't associate sounds with colors. I associate letters with colors. The Cyrillic alphabet is interesting. Some of the Cyrillic letters are the same color as their Latin equivalents (e.g. Cyrillic "Р" is purple like a Latin "R", not green like a Latin "P") but some are the same color as the Latin letter with the same shape (e.g. Cyrillic "У" is red like a Latin "Y", not yellow like a Latin "U", which "Ю" is; and the letters "Б", "В", and "Ь" all take their orange color from the Latin letter "B"). The letters which don't have any clear Latin equivalents don't really have vivid color associations for me, except I suppose I would call "Ш" and "Щ" blue, and "Я" is most definitely red.
Levi on 11 September 2011
|
I tried to explain how it works for me and suddenly realized that I don't have grapheme-colour, but ... phoneme-colour synaesthesia. I don't really see the colour when reading or hearing words, but I know it as an innate quality. Natural colours override synaesthethic colours - akai sounds red (well, bright, sooty orange), but aoi would also sound red if it didn't mean blue/green. Words that are written in a wrong colour are more difficult to read. The edition of Die Unendliche Geschichte printed in red and green was one of the books I found the most exhausting to read. Only black and grey (and colors close to them) work as neutral background colour. I suspect that if you made colour coding work for you, there is a chance you might also start having trouble with pre-coloured material and using highlighters.
For example, M is dark green for me. German and English B is light royal blue, Spanish b/v has a light reddish orange that turns more matte, like ochre or loess, when pronounced as approximant. Aspirated P is dark, reddish purple (plum), unaspirated has a lighter shade of purple. Korean M is dark mint green when pronounced slowly, and changes to matte dark pink when pronounced quickly, Japanese B is dark pink.
Aspiration makes the colour stronger and colder, tense and double consonants have higher saturation. Diphtongs and consonant clusters are represented by colour gradients, so are syllables and entire words.
These associations form while I'm learning a language's phonology, but they only become helpful when I already have internalized it. At that time, it works like a secondary filing system that helps me to access words more quickly.
Bao on 11 September 2011
|
I am not a synesthete but I try to associate words with colors to remember the gender. Masculine words are blue,
feminine words are pink and neuter words are green. The words have these colors in Anki for example.
The word for key in French is "la clé" (feminine). To memorize this word, I visualize a big key made from pink clay.
Aquila on 24 September 2011
|
Bao wrote:
I tried to explain how it works for me and suddenly realized that I don't
have grapheme-colour, but ... phoneme-colour synaesthesia.I don't really see the colour
when reading or hearing words, but I know it as an innate quality |
|
|
They are for my part also an innate quality that I can only perceive in my mind. When I
read, I dont see the letters in the colour I associate it. On the other hand, when I
hear a word, I see its color in my mind; the words appear written in their color.
When I think of letters individually my brain associates them with colours, but the
weird thing is, when I think of a complete word I see that word entirely in a colour.
Words also have a determined position around me or in my mind. (I know that can seem
weird) My mind has different places where words can position themselves.
Unlike Levi I dont associate Cyrillic letters with their Latin equivalents in terms of
colour.
And there's also some colour that I just can't name. Like if the color could not really
exist in real life. For those special colors I can give an approximate corresponding
real life color, but it is never accurate enough.
Bao wrote:
These associations form while I'm learning a language's phonology, but they
only become helpful when I already have internalized it. At that time, it works like a
secondary filing system that helps me to access words more quickly. |
|
|
That is exactly the way it goes for me too!
WillyJames on 27 November 2011
|
I know this is an old post but I have a few points to make too. I have color grapheme synaesthesia but
onlyon numbers and vowels, although L(pinky purple) does present as a lighter colour of the letter I(dark
purple) .
I have always thought of having this as an absolutely useless skill to have. My party piece with numbers is
to be able to tell you instantly how many of a certain number are in a string of numbers. Number 1
(brightest green ever) is the easiest for some reason. It's just seems to pop out the most. When this
happens the numbers will appear in the original colour that they are intended to be for a split second and
then they get layered with what my brain wants the colour to be. It is possible to blink it away to the
original colour but then the associated colour will fade back in (if that makes sense). I always assumed
that everyone had this until I joined the forces and asked why the numbers were in different colours whilst
learning Morse code to which I was informed "they are not, what are you talking about? ".
It doesn't work on paper based materials but only on digital screens. Mobile phones, PC monitors etc. I am
not entirely sure how I can utilise this "skill" into my language learning though. Out of curiosity, are the
other syneasthetes on this forum left hand dominant or ambidextrous by any chance?
ExRN on 13 August 2015
|
Right-handed, and I only associate colors with vowels, not with consonants.
blauwevos on 14 August 2015
|
I'm right handed and have color grapheme synaesthesia.
I always find it amusing how other people's letters are so different in color to mine.
For Japanese, my Hiragana colors are the same as their romaji equivalents. So か is the
same as "ka", そ is the same as "so", etc. My Katakana colors seem to be the same but
much weaker, maybe because the characters are too choppy/blocky and because I don't
read Katakana very much.
For Kanji/Chinese characters, there isn't much color either. A component like 口 is
black like the letter O, and straight line components tend to be white like the letter
"I". 女 is lilac colored, 糸 is red/purple/gold like multi-colored spool of thread.
But there are so many components that didn't take on a color in my head, so many kanji
don't really have a color.
Yukamina on 06 October 2015
|
Yukamina wrote:
I'm right handed and have color grapheme synaesthesia.
I always find it amusing how other people's letters are so different in color to mine.
For Japanese, my Hiragana colors are the same as their romaji equivalents. So か is the
same as "ka", そ is the same as "so", etc. My Katakana colors seem to be the same but
much weaker, maybe because the characters are too choppy/blocky and because I don't
read Katakana very much.
For Kanji/Chinese characters, there isn't much color either. A component like 口 is
black like the letter O, and straight line components tend to be white like the letter
"I". 女 is lilac colored, 糸 is red/purple/gold like multi-colored spool of thread.
But there are so many components that didn't take on a color in my head, so many kanji
don't really have a color.
|
|
|
absolutely facinating!! I have read previously that we are born that way but I have also read elsewhere that
kts from association that we acquire as children. The letter A seems to be consistently red for a lot of
others too. Maybe the letter "a" was always produced in red on them flashcards that used to get hung up
whilst at nursery? Not sure. I remember as a child, each letter having a character associated with it. For
example, the letter "I" was impy ink.....could the ink have been purple? I cant remember. Possible though.I
remember the letter "A" was annie apple.....now its a 50/50 chance on what colour she was and I am
guessing that she was a red apple. Makes sense to me. The numbers though, I cannot recall anywhere in
my childhood that had numbers represented by colours. No one in their right mind would use the colours I
have in order to teach them. Lime green? Not even sure that was offered as a choice on BBC computers or
whatever ancient technology the teachers used when I was at school.
maybe coincidental but stress appears to make the colours even more powerful than they are as standard.
Closing a sale in a call centre, phone numbers would pop out, doing tests on computers with numbers,
again powerful popping.
Accents on letters dont affect it either. An I is an í which is purple, although the accented I does appear
more purple there but I think that is because it is slimmer so my brain is trying harder to tell me that it is
definitely an i.
ExRN on 17 October 2015
|
Would probably be better to colour word types rather than letters
I could see this helping with conjugations
In Spanish this could be useful
Seeing the verb endings in different colours would help them
Sink in
mercutio on 08 May 2016
|
Www.forum.language-learners.org - Mercutio we have
pretty much all moved to the aforementioned forum!
Rhian on 08 May 2016
|
|