Vowelspace vs. Colorspace

And now for something completely different:

Do any of you draw associations between vowels and colors? I myself have a
fairly logical (continuous) correspondence. I remember a few discussions
with a more heavily synesthetic friend in high school and I think his vowels
had fairly similar color associations.

Two connenctions which come fairly naturally are [A] = red and [i] = white.
From this follows that [y] = cyan and [Q] = black. It could be expected that
yellow would then fall either to [M] or the [a]~[&] region - but no, my
instinct says that it's [e]. From this would logically follow that [&]
equals orange, [u] blue, [M] magenta etc.

However, I do have a few associations that run contrary to this system: a
very strong such one is that black = [9], which seems quite out-of-the-blue.
(NPI) It also feels that [o] should be lighter than [u], not darker. [O]
goes even further, it's pastel indigo!
However, many of the system's predictions do work - besides blue being [u],
there's [@] as brownish gray and [8] bluish gray. [3] associates as dark
brown and [6] as dark red, which are probably influence from [9]. [I] is
beige and [7] sort of iridescent purplish brown. There does not seem to be a
green vowel at all.

Needless to say, this would make quite a neat CG graph, but I don't have
enough graphical tools at my disposal at the moment. :(

John Vertical

Replies