Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a condition where two or more senses are combined in the perception of something. People with synesthesia are called Synesthetes.

The most common form of synesthesia is grapheme-colour synesthesia, where someone sees letters and numbers as having inherent colours. This doesn't mean that the person actually sees different colours when they see different letters and numbers, but rather that they associate them with different colours. For example, a grapheme-colour synesthete might perceive the word "colour" as being a darker word than the word "essence" because they associate the letters in the word "colour" with purples and blacks and dark reds, while they associate "e" with light orange and "s" with fluorescent yellow.

The chances are you know several people who are grapheme-colour synesthetes (like me), if you aren't one yourself.

Grapheme-colour synesthetes have an advantage over non-synesthetes when it comes to reading and spelling. For example one who sees an S and a 5 as different colours would easily be able to find a capital S in a page full of 5's, and once a grapheme-colour synesthete knows what colour a word normally appears as, it is easy for them to spot a spelling mistake, because of the rogue colour that appears in the middle of a word that shouldnt have it.

There are other kinds of synesthesia but they're less common. Or at least less reported. They include:

- Music-colour synesthesia, where different musical notes cause the listener to experience different colours. Music-colour synesthetes often find that the colours move in and out of their field of view.

- Number-form synesthesia, where number lines can be visually seen as twisting line in space in a person's minds eye. For example a person may see a the real number line, or the historic timeline (the timeline of history) as a real line in their mind. This person may say things like that a number is further away than another number, or behind it, or up or downhill from it.

- Ordinal linguistic personification (OLP), where different letters, numbers, dates, etc appear to have different personalities. This is one of the least well known forms of synesthesia.

- Lexical-gustatory synesthesia, where different sounds or words in language cause the speaker/reader/listener to experience different tastes in their mouth. As a prominent synesthete, James Wannerton, said:

"Whenever I hear, read, or articulate (inner speech) words or word sounds, I experience an immediate and involuntary taste sensation on my tongue. These very specific taste associations never change and have remained the same for as long as I can remember."


There are several other kinds as well, but those are the most common. It is extremely hard for a non-synesthete to understand how a synesthete can experience what they experience. For example, I can't see how anyone could associate different letters with different personalities, yet there are people out there who can and do.

Another thing about synesthesia is that everyone who experiences it experiences it differently. No two grapheme-colour synesthetes see the same colours in letters, and no two lexical-gustatory synesthetes taste the same thing for a given sound.


So anyway, I'm a grapheme-colour synesthete as well as a number form synesthete. I think one reason I like French as a language better than English is that, to me, French has much better colour co-ordination.


So is anyone else a synesthete?