Tasting colours? (synesthesia)

I found a couple of places ont he net to take a test for it:

nicolamorgan.co.uk/colour.php
mindbluff.com/syntest.htm

and a resource:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia

That didn’t make any sense. When I say graphical equalizer, I mean the sort of thing you get when you play a MP3 in Windows Media Player - cascading torrents of color to accompany your music. Which is, you’re right, not linguistic at all, but I’m not sure where you got that idea to begin with.

What I’m saying is that the senses themselves are intertwined: it’s not just that you think Thursday is rather yellow-green, or even that you consider it to be inherently yellow-green, but that when you see or think of Thursday, there is yellow-green in your field of vision! Or if it is the written word you see, it is as good as tinted yellow-green for the synaesthete.

To me, A is red. Always has been. But that’s still an abstract association because I do not see the red overlaid on the letter. I think making cross-sense associations is a universal human habit, ranging from just being able to do it when one concentrates on the task to having two different abstract sensory properties permanently tied together in one’s mind (like the color purple and a Pink Floyd album), always. But that’s not synaesthesia, not unless your senses themselves are really physically cross-wired so that pink floyd albums are, literally and not just abstractly, purple when you see them.

There’s a man described on the wikipedia article who experiences a different taste for every word he says, thinks, or reads. I associate the word “Leather” with a coarse, bitter taste, and can even pretend to emulate the taste if I imagine hard enough, but I am not in actuality tasting the word as he does. For him it’s as real as biting down on a strawberry (or whatever it tastes like to him).

Ultimately it’s a game of semantics and arbitrary boundaries, I suppose, as well as the inherent difficulty in conveying abstract concepts like this through language. But I think there’s an important difference between thinking very strongly of a color and seeing that color itself.

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BTW Bruno, you look rather brown-blue to me. I’d say my name is not so much a dark green as dark blue, with maybe a yellow highlight. To each his own.

Spamtek, I look at your name and I see it green. What I want you to understand is that I actually see it black. I know it’s black. And there’s no green overlaying it, highlighting it, floating around it or anything. Now, if I look at the quote button beside your post, your name will still be green. In fact, I can’t make it not be green after I saw it. Sometimes it becomes green before I pay attention to it, sometimes only after I look at it, the fact is—it stays green. And not because I think it’s a rather green name. It’s because your name IS the green thing in my visual field—only it’s not green, it’s black letters!

(If you didn’t get it, I’m dropping this discussion, I just don’t see words to phrase how I see the green about your name. I’m just telling you I do.)

It’s probably too vague a distinction to expect anyone to be able to put it into words, you and me alike. I imagine it’s like Einstein’s frustration trying to describe the shape, color, and essential form of a swan to his blind friend.

I think I get what you’re saying, but it’s the same thing I think I thought I got at the end of your last post which you insist is wrong, so… discussion dropped, I’m thinking. Hope I wasn’t being too terribly anagonistic or anything.

:lol: You weren’t, and it wasn’t a frustrating discussion, no, but we weren’t getting anywhere either, were we? :tongue:

Does associating school subjects with colors mean i have synæsthesia?
Math=blue
Science=green
history=brown
reading=purple
english=red

Hmm, interesting; I do that too. The colors are also always the same for me, but different than what you posted. Here is my list:

Math - Red
Science - Green
History - Blue
Reading/English - Yellow

I also like the color that I associate with my name, which seemed to come out of nowhere:

[color=#ffba00]Sonia[/color]

It’s something like that, but not exactly. The name Sonia is just that shade of yellow-orange to me. I’ve also associated letters and numbers with colors, but I don’t think that makes me a synæsthete.

have to shove in my arbitrary values:

English - green
Social Studies - …also green. Sometimes red, though.
Mathematics - Gray
Sciences - Dark Blue
German - Orange/Brown

Math = Blue
English = Yellow
German = White
Biology = Green
Physics = Purple

By the way, the colours are not for the words, they’re for the subjects.

Wow, that about the man tasting his words sounds really weird. I´d be talking to myself constantly :wink: . Anyways, I think synaesthesia is a really interesting topic. And btw, what colours is my name?

Martin

Tapir has always been an antique white–ish colour for me. And Martin is very orange. But that’s just me. :smile:

Now I’d like to know what I am. In exchange for that knowledge, I shall tell you what color my mind associates with Bruno.

He’s something like an [color=#330099]indigo[/color] for me.

Of course, I don’t have synaesthesia, but I can still associate colors with names if I think about them. Like I said already, the name Sonia is something like [color=#ffaf00]this[/color], while my username is a completely different color.

BlissfulBlues is kind of an interesting one for me, since I can associate two different colors with the name. When I think of the name in my head, my inner monologue, it is more of a [color=#9999ff]lavender[/color] type of color that matches with my avatar.

However, as soon as I typed my username out, it was completely different for me, seeing it written is more of a blue when I see it. No, it’s two blues when I see it! As a whole, in my mind, it is a lavender. When I see it written, I split it up into the [color=#059af5]Blissful[/color] and the [color=#0000cc]Blues[/color].

I’d like to know what Bruno thinks, since he is the synaesthete. :wink:

Oh, and as a sidenote, the name Bruno has always made me think of spaghetti. :tongue: It has nothing to do with the Bruno that we all know, it’s just what I associate with that name for no apparent reason. :tongue:

Blissful is pink and Blues is definately black. (Blue is blue. Blues is black. Most colours are what they are or similar to what they are. But there are a few exceptions, like crimson, lavander and all those weird names…)

Sonia is a grey colour.

/me wonders what’s the point of wanting to know how your name is seen by a weird person :tongue:

After all, anyone can give opinions on that, only my opinions are irrational and most people’s have some underlying reason. Which would make BlissfulBlues a tough name not to label blue…

There are several German pasta commercials where the German tennis star Steffi Graf promotes her Italian Spaghetti cook Bruno.

Guess it´s some horoscope like thing, you get a piece of information that might or might not have a background and try to fit it into the picture you got from yourself. You can always interpret it the way that seems nice. Orange and white? That means I am a warm and friendly yet also intelligent person :wink:
To ask someone who isn´t a synaesthet isn´t as much fun, cause he isn´t so sure about what he says and also cause we understand how he does it, nothing mysterious about it.

But a bit more serious, I also like to check wether different persons think of the same colours. Btw, my girlfriend (hi :smile: ) , who says that she isn´t really a synaesthet but also often associates senses with other senses, thinks that martin is brown and red/orange.

Math - fuschia
Science - blue
History - yellow
Reading - dark blue
English - red

Martin is a light blue. Tapir is a sort of light-yellowish ochre.

You’re synæsthete and lefty? :shock: If you tell me you were taught to write with the right hand, I’ll be scared out of my body! :scared:

Actually it’s really weird… writing and eating are just about the only things I do left-handed; everything else is right-handed. Rather, I can eat right-handed, but it’s uncomfortable. Writing with my right hand takes me ages and almost always comes out unreadable.

I picked my shirt because I thought it tasted like orange sherbert

but that’s because it looks like it!

Edit: Woah, didn’t see there is a second page of discussion here. ehm, just take it as if this post was at the end of the first page :razz:

Mh, not necessarily every cross-sense connection means you are synastaethic.
For example:

Math is red for me. That’s clear, nothing to change about. But if i think about it i have to realize that my first math classbooks (< does this word exist? I think about the thin ones to write in, how are they named in english?) were red.

Same thing for example for Sonia. Sonia is clearly a yellow name. But, thinking about it, I make the connection in German: Sonne (That’s sun) is written similar to Sonja/Sonnja/Sonnia (That’s the german equivalent of the name.) It also sounds similar in german. Therefore the connection.

So: You don’t have it, if the effect is limited. I think there is no fixed border. But to a synasthaetic, the effect will occur everytime with every word or thing or… whatever. It’s remarkable, and there seems not to be a clear sense behind it. Also, they don’t have to think about it.

If i think “hmm, what color could “french” as a subject have?” my subconcious will give me a color, be it based on something or just random.

Synasthaetics also connect other senses (though colors are common). One could associate a taste with a feeling. “Uh, that tastes rather silky/pointed/hard” or “that feels sour/sweet/bitter.”

Anyways, it would interest me to try in my dreams. i could ask my subconciousness to show me why french seems blue to me. g

And a question: Do capital letters make a difference?

is “Marc” different from “marc” or “mArC” ? (and what color is it anyways, that’s my name :razz:)

^^ i get really interested in such things ^^