Synesthesia - Show me your numbers & alphabet, you freaks!

[Red Herring]

Ever wondered if you were the only one who thinks the letter "a" is red and the music of Bach tastes like freshly fallen snow?

Then this is the place for you. For starters, let's compare what color numbers and letter have for you. It's hard to get it right on paper, but this is more or less what it has always looked like for me:

So what do yours look like? I am curious.

And for those who wonder what the hell I'm talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

 

[crack]

X

 

[skylights]

i thought i had synaesthesia for a while, because i have such strong associations. it's funny though, upon learning the cognitive functions i figured it was more like Ne than actual synaesthesia.

like:

A - bright red (like apples!)
B - medium blue
C - warm yellow (like a cat)
D - black
E - black/orange/green (weird overlay... it's a "juicy" letter)
F - green (like fresh grass)
G - purple (grapes)
H - dark ash gray
I - white like ice (very shiny letter)
L - yellow like light
M - blue, like the moon (my favorite letter)
N - orange (also "juicy")
O - black
P - purple
Q - light gray
R - red
S - green (snake!)
T - dark green
U - light warm brown
V - purple-red (like red-violet)
W - light icy gray/purple/blue
X - black
Y - black/yellow
Z - black

more "overlays" - like it's two colors at the same time, all over.

1 - white/red
2 - light blue
3 - black/red
4 - deeper blue/tangerine
5 - black/medium-deep green
6 - black/purple
7 - tangerine (juicy)
8 - medium blue (lighter than 4, deeper than 2)
9 - juicy yellow
0 - clear/white

etc.

i really like your J color!!

 

[Hate]

Ever wondered if you were the only one who thinks the letter "a" is red and the music of Bach tastes like freshly fallen snow?

Then this is the place for you. For starters, let's compare what color numbers and letter have for you. It's hard to get it right on paper, but this is more or less what it has always looked like for me:

Cool, so I'm like a blueish green color.

like:
E - black/orange/green (weird overlay... it's a "juicy" letter)
N - orange (also "juicy")
7 - tangerine (juicy)
9 - juicy yellow

I think you just like saying the word juicy.

EN79 will be my new lucky letter/number combination... since now I know these are the juicy ones.

 

[Phantonym]

I am in no way claiming to be a synesthete, but I've always perceived that weekdays feel like close to these colours:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

I don't get such a strong feeling about letters, numbers, words, months or anything like that.

 

[Red Herring]

Cool, so I'm like a blueish green color.

I think you just like saying the word juicy.

EN79 will be my new lucky letter/number combination... since now I know these are the juicy ones.

Nah, it doesn't exactly work that way, more like mixing a potion with different ingredients blended together. But you are blueish, steel blue I would say.

I am in no way claiming to be a synesthete, but I've always perceived that weekdays feel like close to these colours:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

I don't get such a strong feeling about letters, numbers, words, months or anything like that.

Cool! But now you mention it and something about these colors does seem strange, I would suggest:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

These are only rough approximations, though.

Funny thing is, I hesitated for a moment to see if it was the same in Wnglish as it is in my native language and it turns out it mostly is. But it gets difficult, because names and ideas mix. Montag and monday are red, but lunes sounds just far too blueish to fit. So maybe I am going with names rather than points in time here. Gotta think about it.

 

[Ginkgo]

I always wondered if those who see auras around others were, as far as scientific explanations go, synesthetes.

 

[Red Herring]

I always wondered if those who see auras around others were, as far as scientific explanations go, synesthetes.

Hmm, I never thought about that - mainly because everything spiritual or esoteric is so alien to me - but that is actually an awesome explanation!

 

[Xenon]

Don't have it, but I've read about it, and it's fascinating stuff. Do you experience any blending of the senses aside from numbers and letters being certain colours?

I had a neuroscience prof in university who researched this. He says a surprising number of people experience it, but a lot of them never talk about it, and often they assume everyone else experiences the same thing. He once tried to find some synesthetes by interviewing a bunch of undergrads, and he met this one guy who had it but could not be convinced that it wasn't the norm. He kept insisting that everyone must experience the same effects he did, and that the researchers were just telling people otherwise to see how they'd react, and that was the real experiment. Nothing they said could change is mind, and he got increasingly agitated, and they finally just let him go.

 

[gromit]

I see numbers and letters with specific colors. Two or three times I've been super tired and listening to music and I could feel textures from the sounds... sometimes loud unexpected sounds physically hurt me though, like someone is slapping me in the face.

 

[Patches]

I always wondered if those who see auras around others were, as far as scientific explanations go, synesthetes.

The word Synesthesia at it's core just translates to "union"-"sensation". So really, any union between two senses can be described as synesthesia.

It comes in tons of different forms - The one primarily being discussed here is called "Grapheme" in which letters/numbers/words 'have colors'. To my knowledge there are over 60 'types' of synesthesia - some of them occurring in pairs or individually. Grapheme is one of the more common ones. So is seeing colors when you hear sounds/music (For example, John Mayer claims that he experiences colors when he hears music). Sounds can have colors. You can experience colors when you feel particular emotions. Personalities or people can have colors. Flavors can have colors, colors can have flavors. Pain can have colors, pain can have flavors, etc. Basically take any sensation, couple it with a sense such as taste, touch, visual, etc.

Everyone probably has it to some degree. Even if you feel like inanimate objects have personalities - If you 'sense' that your car or you computer has a personality - that's synesthesia.

There's even a bit of 'cultural' synesthesia ingrained in us all. Things like assigning gender to objects or colors. Why is pink feminine and blue masculine to so many people? There's no real logical explanation for us to match a personality to a color, except that our brain has been taught to make that connection. That's sort of a taste of how synesthetes connect things, only they don't have to have it 'taught' to them. Yellow might be playful, green might be rude. It just is. They don't necessarily know why. But it is.

 

[Coriolis]

I am in no way claiming to be a synesthete, but I've always perceived that weekdays feel like close to these colours:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

I don't get such a strong feeling about letters, numbers, words, months or anything like that.

For me, it's:

Monday - wine red
Tuesday - yellow
Wednesday - medium brown
Thursday - rust/orange
Friday - black
Saturday - yellowish green
Sunday - royal blue

January - wine red
February - medium blue
March - medium brown
April - rosy red
May - pale yellow
June - black
July - black
August - cherry red
September - rust/orange
October - yellow
November - brown
December - royal blue

If I think of letters and numbers individually, they have color, but I don't see them with the color when they are in words.

 

[redcheerio]

I have synesthesia envy, it's so interesting to me! I know a woman who sees colors when she hears music, in addition to seeing color when she reads some things. The whole passage will take on colors for her. When I was in my late 20s, apparently my writing was sometimes hot pink to her, haha.

I actually have a mild form of it in a different way, and it was much stronger when I was a kid. It used to jump out at me, but after years of ignoring it, now I only see it when I deliberately look for it.

Mine is that I see facial expressions in letters and numbers, but also in inanimate objects. This could be a product of Ne, too.

 

[kyuuei]

I don't see colors in numbers or letters..

I see music in pictures and colors in my head.. People's voices have colors for me. Colors have tastes and smells, faintly. Patterns of any sort move of their own accord to me, and it seems that lately I've noticed that piles of numbers written out like the placard picture of the alphabet in the OP, certain letters will "pop forward" and others fall back farther on some sort of imaginary 3D plane. A, T, X, Z, O, and D all stick out. B, P, D, J, L, and M all fall back. People's general personalities can be loud or quiet, but the colors I associate with people's personalities are not involuntary, so the coors for people don't count to me.

Synesthesia means two things for someone who wants a run-down of it:
1. You can't help it.. if you never wanted to see C as the color pink again in your life, you'd still see it that way. "Associating" things with colors and smells isn't a disfunction of the brain, it is a product of it. I relate people to colors, and although my synesthesia sometimes interferes with this, that process isn't the same thing. I say 'disfunction' because technically it is--faulty wiring.. but it doesn't really hurt or hinder the person. The same way a slightly lazy-eyelid doesn't impair sight or other optical motor skills.
2. One sensory function is connected to another. "seeing" things isn't the only one. Sight can produce sounds, sounds produce tastes, seeing produces the ability to touch or feel, etc.

 

[skylights]

^ real synaesthete

sunday
monday
tuesday
wednesday
thursday
friday
saturday

something like that

also apparently my months basically correlate with their gemstones, must have made that association forever ago

january
february
march
april
may
june (okay june deviates)
july (as does july)
august
september
october
november
december

 

[Rail Tracer]

I am in no way claiming to be a synesthete, but I've always perceived that weekdays feel like close to these colours:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

I don't get such a strong feeling about letters, numbers, words, months or anything like that.

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

Certain days of the week have certain elements. Or actually, that is why the names of the week are named after planets and elements. So in a way, it is synesthesia to begin with.

Sunday-Sun
Monday-Moon
Tuesday-Mars-Fire
Wednesday-Mercury-Water
Thursday-Jupiter-Wood
Friday-Venus-Gold/Metal
Saturday-Saturn-Soil

 

[violet_crown]

Neat synaesthete stuff.

That's really cool, and kinda beautiful, kyuuei. I'm guessing that you must've taken these experiences for granted initially. When was the first time you articulated these connections to yourself? And when/how did you realize that your experience was different than others?

 

[Tallulah]

I used to have color synesthesia when I was younger, but don't anymore. I have always had number form synesthesia, though. I see the numbers 1-100 on a specific "path" in my head that winds around and climbs as the numbers get higher.

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

I used to have color synesthesia when I was younger, but don't anymore. I have always had number form synesthesia, though. I see the numbers 1-100 on a specific "path" in my head that winds around and climbs as the numbers get higher.

That's exactly what I have. The background is a kind of stormy, very dark orangey red color, and the numbers are white and follow a path like a roller coaster. 1-10 go straight up, and then from then on they curve, with the teens going left, then the rest going slightly up and then off into the distance. So strange.

I don't know if this is synesthesia, but to me letters and numbers have personalities based on their shapes reminding me of facial expressions or body positions. Like, 2 and 4 are wimpy, but 1, 9, M and Z are badass cool. 6 is sunny but naive; 8, R and Y are stoic and dignified.

 

[redcheerio]

I don't know if this is synesthesia, but to me letters and numbers have personalities based on their shapes reminding me of facial expressions or body positions. Like, 2 and 4 are wimpy, but 1, 9, M and Z are badass cool. 6 is sunny but naive; 8, R and Y are stoic and dignified.

Hey, that's the same as mine! Someone told me awhile ago it was a form of it.

It's one of the reasons I like onomatopeia; words like haha and hehe have the same facial expressions as when you laugh like that. (I might expand on this later, hehe.)