Re: Synaesthesia

For most of you this probably sounds crazy, and if it doesn't make any sense
I'm not sure if I could explain it.  But hopefully someone here knows what
I'm talking about.

I've recently discovered a psychological term, "synaesthesia".  I've read a
few descriptions of it, but they all make it sound like it's a disorder
where you can't tell if something is a sound or an image.  And that's not
how I'd describe it.  I'm going to ask a few questions / make a few comments
below and see if they resonate with anyone.  For me, conlanging is
intimately connected with this.

- The letter F is blue, but a particular shade of blue that is hard to
explain.

- The months of the year quite clearly go from top to bottom, but the hours
of the day do not.  They go from bottom to top (starting around sunrise),
then curve back to go down to the next day around 8pm.

- When I listen to some songs, they have a very clear appearance.  The style
of the 80's group, the Police, is definitely a type of purple with these
thin black lines across it in a haphazard way.

- What color is Wednesday?

- These colors, images, and sounds that I am talking about are clearly not
in front of me like the things that elicit them.  They are instead some sort
of innate quality that I am aware of, sort of on top of what I'm
seeing/hearing/smelling.

- Has a word ever bothered you because it had a meaning that was very clear
to you by its sound, yet totally different from the meaning it is used as?
For me, the word "paper" is definitely the wrong word for the thin stuff we
write on.  A better name for that stuff would be "filled" or "bristle".


I'm sure most of you are reading this and wondering what I've been smoking
today.  (And possibly wondering where you can get some.)  If so, thanks for
reading, but I've heard that sort of thing plenty of times before.  You
might as well just ignore this message.

If instead any of these struck you as obvious (or in the case of my own
associations, completely wrong), that's what I'm interested in.  If you're
like me, you've never thought about it much, like you never think about
walking.  I realized something was going on when I made a comment about the
"inherent" color of something as opposed to the color it actually has.  And
if you find that much of your conlanging is in the furtherance of a quest to
find ought what everything ought to sound like, let me know.

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.

Joe Fatula

Replies