Re: Synaesthesia

From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
Sent: Saturday, December 28, 2002 6:31 AM
Subject: Re: Synaesthesia


> I don't really see it as that. I'm not at all concerned with finding out
> what things ought to sound like; to me, these auxilliary associations are
> just an internal mental aid to me. They are probably totally meaningless
> to anyone else but myself. Although, I *have* met someone who also
> associates colors with musical scales, and we've had interesting
> conversations about what the colors "ought" to be. Of course, it didn't
> take very long to realize that we perceived colors differently (colors
> convey different connotations to us), and so could never agree on specific
> colors for specific scales.
You're probably right, that these associations probably don't mean anything
to anyone else.  Besides, if everybody agreed on them, calendars would all
use the same colors for the days, months, etc.

> > I'm guessing that if you don't understand any of this you won't see why
I
> > posted it here.  But for me, this is as linked to language-making as the
> > study of phonetics.
>
> I don't know, to me it is more closely linked to mental symbolic
> representation than to language itself.
I agree, but I find the two linked quite often in my own thinking.  I am
always vaguely aware when speaking that I'm translating from my own mental
symbolism into English.  It's a strange thing to find a word in another
language and say "Aha!", that it is a direct equivalent of a mental "word"
you've always used in thought but needed an awkward phrasing in your usual
spoken language.

> Oh BTW, did I ever mention that
> English is red or yellow, French is pink/brown, and Ebisedian is yellow
> and brown? :-) (And when I say something is color X and color Y, it
> doesn't mean they have a 2-color pattern, but that they are simultaneously
> both colors. The mind is free to make physically-impossible conceptions,
> after all.)
This definitely makes sense to me.  Although I disagree entirely with your
color choices (thinking that Italian is much more yellow than English), many
things that have a color association have it in a way that makes color look
inadequate.  Like a word I'm now using in a conlang.  It's their word for
white, but the image of the word is a creamy sort of white, such that you
could almost imagine butter.  But it's also sort of a blue color to me, and
at the same time.  The blue isn't diminished by the white, nor do they mix
together.  It is simply both in the same way that an apple can be both round
and green at the same time.

Speaking of color words, I found that two of my languages had almost
identical words for red, despite the fact that their phonologies and
creations were incredibly separated.  Here's a list of color words I chose
for their onomatopoeic (sort of) properties.  They all sound like the color
to me, at least partly.  What colors do they sound like to any of you?  The
sounds are all standard Roman alphabet, c and g being /k/ and /g/, th is
/T/.  All of them are stressed on the first syllable.

valien
megraur
caelian
seuthul
caret
urgom

Any thoughts?

Replies