Synesthesia - similarities?

Post Reply New Topic

Forgive me if this has been done before, though I tried to search this site, and didn't find anything. I thought it might be cool for those who have grapheme to color synesthesia to post their synesthetic alphabets and calendars. I know that no two synesthetes are totally alike, but I've read that certain letters and numbers tend to be more on the universal side, like the number 5 being red, (which is true for me!)

Here is my synesthetic alphabet and calendar:


I made this in Microsoft Word. Took a little while, but I thought it was kind of fun. I put the background as grey, since I have quite a few white and off-white letters and numbers.

What are your colors for numbers and letters etc?

Idk if this is caused by synesthesia or not, but when I read text in black, it feels standoffish and unwelcoming. If I read it in red, it feels warm and welcoming. Other colors are different emotions, but those are the two most extreme examples.

I don't exactly associate letters and things with colors, but they do kinda have their own meanings. I never really thought it was strange though, but I suppose that's why I have a very good memory.

Like, for me, I imagine December to be alternating red and green, red and white, or just plain white because of the holidays and snow. I guess the green also comes from the evergreen trees in everybody's living room. January is a very light blue because of the snow combined with the sky, with no green because all the trees were cut down. I can't think of October and November without picturing a pumpkin in my mind (but a more brownish pumpkin for November).

The number 160 I imagine to be really fat, 170 is kinda skinny, 180 is close to normal, but kinda wide, while I imagine 190 to be really skinny, even moreso than 170. 200 seems to be a perfect thickness, probably because it's a nice looking number divisible by 100, which I imagine to be golden colored with sparkles for celebration. The number 14 is fat and obsolete, 15 is a bit better, 16 is small, 17 feels like a joke; almost a fake number that shouldn't exist, while 18 is a nice overall number similar to 15.

For the letter A, I think of alpha. Something superior. B is for bravo, or beta, it's not quite as good. C is for charlie, which reminds me of a fat kid who likes to eat chocolate. I love D, it's a nice triangular airfoil of an airplane owned by Delta airlines. E reminds me of snow, from echo base on Hoth in the Empire Strikes Back. F is a nasty letter. F this one. Or it could also mean foxtrot, which I get confused with the MiG 25 for some reason (isn't the NATO nickname the 'foxboat'?)

Monday reminds me of a sunrise, probably because it sounds like morning, and it's the beginning of a week. I always imagine Tuesday to be colored red, probably because of a restaurant called Ruby Tuesdays. Wednesday is a bright orange, and for some reason reminds me of shoes. Thursday is a navy blue with a bit of gold in it. Friday is synonymous for freedom, and Saturday is an excuse to be lazy. Sunday is like a sunset, in the opposite meaning of Monday.

The color red reminds me of China and how much money we owe them. The color Blue means friendliness, and is a symbol for the western world with our advanced technology. Dark green is natural, but light green screams fake to me. Yellow and pink are usually colors of feminism, which I try not to associate myself with. Although yellow and black combined produce a wasp look, which symbolizes aggressiveness, agility, and power. Grey and silver represent strength and power (in an industrial like way), and seem invincible. Black represents evil and darkness, but also the cutting edge of technology, especially when combined with blue. White is weakness. There's a reason why white flags are used in war to mean "don't kill me!"

Hi OwlYellow,

I have occasional bouts of synesthesia during some simple partial seizures from epilepsy. My synesthesia is usually between fragrances and the tactile senses (I feel smells as a "skin touching). It's amusing and fascinating at first, but if it's too long or too repetitive, it becomes very annoying.

In childhood, I could amaze (often frighten) people by "seeing" their aura of colour surrounding their body as they were thinking of the colour. Other people involved demanded that my skill be verified, by the person writing down the colour they were going to think of themselves enveloped in, and some even tried to trick me by writing down the wrong colour to verify that I wasn't using what they wrote down as a clue to follow.

The two books I've read devoted almost exclusively to Synesthesia are both by Richard E. Cytowic (I haven't read his 2009 book yet). Books-dot-google-dot-com lists many of his books with preview. He somewhat seperates epileptic sensations of synesthesia from true synesthesia, while I wonder how to determine if the "sensation" isn't often more the result of conditioning instead of only synesthesia, esp. with related abstract concepts than with various otherwise near "meaningless" sensations (for example, seeing printed numbers that happen to be prime numbers in the colour orange versus thinking of the colour orange as a mnemonic for a remembered prime number or versus the coincidental illusions of colour filling in the typeface anatomy of a loop).

I dismissed my ability to read the colour of aura as mainly a type of "Clever Hans Effect", where very subtle clues ("subliminal" messages) are inadvertently used (I often wonder if sensitivity to very minor clues can be overwhelming to the extent of near necessary avoidance, or to avoid knowing too much (fear and anger are two common responses from people when they realize you know more about them than they wish to have had revealed indirectly)).

Larger sets of cultural conditionings involving colours are often exploited in the arts, and, for examle, I think Oliver Stone "inverted" the associations of many colours and "wrong" social situations in the controversial film "Natural Born Killers" for initially strong surrealistic effects.

Tadzio

0 and 1 are universally black or white for Synesthetes

For clarification, I do not actually "see" words and numbers with their own color, but if I think about a number, word, color, etc., it always seems to have several different qualities of its own. Almost as if it has it's own personality. I wonder if this has anything to do with having empathy for objects?

1 - blue (slighty purple)
4 - yellow
open E - light green
I, close O and Å - red
Open O - lime green

I have few, i suppressed synestesia for long time.

Hi OwlYellow,

The title of Cytowic's book "Wednesday is Indigo Blue" (2009) is an easy example of Synesthesia BEING related to learning (at least indirectly), despite the early claim that "Synesthesia is not imagination or learning." (at: http://www.cytowic.net/ ).

I make this blunt example from the fact that days of the week (and for that matter, the week having seven days) are entirely a cultural tradition, and nothing inherent in the environment or in "human nature". The book "The Seven Day Circle: the history and meaning of the week" By Eviatar Zerubavel (1989) exemplifies the arbitrariness for the number of days in the cultural concept of a "week". The French Revolution and the USSR tried calendars with ten day weeks, or as in the book's description at amazon-dot-com: "Days, months, and years were given to us by nature, but we invented the week for ourselves. There is nothing inevitable about a seven-day cycle, or about any other kind of week; it represents an arbitrary rhythm imposed on our activities, unrelated to anything in the natural order. But where the week exists—and there have been many cultures where it doesn't—it is so deeply embedded in our experience that we hardly ever question its rightness, or think of it as an artificial convention; for most of us it is a matter of 'second nature.' "

I haven't read "Wednesday is Indigo Blue", and I don't know if Cytowic explains this directly apparent conflict between the stance of "learning" versus "nature" in the days of the week as related to Synesthesia phenomena conforming to days of the "un-natural" week without conditioned learning.

Tadzio

1. Blue ( kind of a nerd,boy)
2.sky blue(sisters with 1)
3.orange(shy,possibly an aspie,boy)
4.yellow (girl,very out going, has a crush on 3)
5. Grey-blue(boring,smart, older brother of 1 and 2)
6. Brick red ( girl, very snobby, fake-friends with 4)
7. Neon green (very smart, loves video games, friends with 1,2 and 5,boy)
8. Grape purple( a chubby lady,loves cooking,sorta the 'mom')
9. Pink (girly girl, is fascinated by 6)
0. Black (boy,emo)
there's all my numbers and there personalities
A. Red B.blue C.green D. Purple-brown E.green F. yellow G.purple H.orange I. Black J.blue-purple K.yellow-orange L.green M. Red-yellow N. Light red-yellow O. Purple P.pinkish Q.red R.red-pink S.yellow T.green U. Faded pink-yellow V.pink W.yellow X.black Y.faded yellow Z.white
there's my alphabet