ChristinaTherese Posted July 25, 2013 Share Posted July 25, 2013 Caveat: I don't know how much I'll actually post in this, but I just wanted to start it. Y hablando castellano ("español") aquà es especialmente animado. (Very loose translation: And speaking Spanish here would be great.) So, I'm a linguistics major, I'm synesthetic (look it up, or ask me for a definition if you're curious but lazy, it's awesome), and I've been raised hearing (although not always understanding) Spanish at least somewhat for most of my life (since my mom lived in Argentina for 20 years). This, in addition to the fact that I'm in the honors program at my college and will have to do some sort of senior project, causes me to have random theories percolating in my head. Theories that mainly revolve around synesthesia and phonology lately. Because I've been finding that the farther forward vowels are formed in my mouth, the lighter their color is in my mind. I don't know enough about consonants, but I'm curious and think that that may hold true for consonants as well. The way that Spanish fits into my theories is that I'm wondering if there's a higher prevalence of synesthesia among people whose first language is phonetic. Oh, and I was just reading a research article in Spanish about synesthesia and it was fascinating. Some other random things about me: I was crazy enough as a child that I would sometimes take a break from doing homework (in a college library, a few floors up from where my mom was teaching at Gordon College, and my brother and I hung around there while she taught because we were homeschooled) by reading the dictionary. Other times I would go wandering in the woods by the ponds, and I was really excited when I found totally random seeming trails going into the woods that may or may not have existed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChristinaTherese Posted July 25, 2013 Author Share Posted July 25, 2013 Garn! I can't find anything about relationships between synesthetic colors and phonology in research articles, except for something about Japanese that there is no accessible form of full text for! I mean, the whole subject is fascinating, sure, but I have a pet project and want answers!!! If it didn't sound so impossible, I'd smell a senior project in the wind.... And maybe I do anyway. I guess I could contact the American Synesthete Association and see what they have to say. :wall: And if I do end up going to grad school or something.... This could be fun. I guess there are a lot of unanswered questions, since the field has only been really studied since the late 80's or the 90's... so it's new, and fascinating, and I guess I'm bound to not be able to find all my answers. Not, that is, unless I dig deeper than just looking up articles. If I could get deeper, this could be really fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChristinaTherese Posted July 25, 2013 Author Share Posted July 25, 2013 Well, I wrote to the ASA. We'll see if they get back with anything of interest.... I hope they do! And... maybe... it would be really cool if there was a researcher that I could get to know who would be interested in my questions... and it would be the coolest summer job ever if I could work on research of that myself... and I'm totally dreaming and that is very likely to never happen to me but it would be very cool. I didn't mention that crazy idea at all in my email either, I left my request for information as just that, a simple request for information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted July 27, 2013 Share Posted July 27, 2013 That sounds like a cool project. I hope you find some answers!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BG45 Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 Seconding what TheresaThoma said. I hope you get some interesting answers, the project sounds neat! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted July 29, 2013 Share Posted July 29, 2013 Something else I am curious about. If you have a particular color (or series of color) for a word does that stay the same between languages or does it change? (I'm curious is the color linked to the sound or to the concept/idea). Is it different for others? (I hope you don't mind me asking questions, I just find this fascinating and I love learning about stuff like this) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChristinaTherese Posted July 30, 2013 Author Share Posted July 30, 2013 Something else I am curious about. If you have a particular color (or series of color) for a word does that stay the same between languages or does it change? (I'm curious is the color linked to the sound or to the concept/idea). Is it different for others? (I hope you don't mind me asking questions, I just find this fascinating and I love learning about stuff like this) Oh, questions are welcome! The colors are linked to letters, and there is (for me) even more detail that I'm finding as I delve into the finer details of phonology, distinctions that are close to the colors of letters but differ in small ways. (For instance, the letter <t> is a kind of straw colored yellow in my mind.) Sometimes words have spellings that make so little sense phonetically that I don't even remember their proper spellings, like /kuskus/ (that's IPA, and I still so not remember how it is spelled because the spelling is so different from how I've always seen it). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 interesting, hmmm this makes me wonder if how a letter is pronounced in a different language might change the color like I know that in French the sounds are more "forward" in the mouth than in English producing a slightly different sound. It is subtle but it is there. (I just finished a course in French phonetics and we spent a good amount of time studying the differences between English and French.) BTW it is spelled couscous :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 Something else I meant to ask you. Have you ever heard of the book called "A Mango Shaped Space"? It is about a girl who has synesthesia, it was from reading that book that I first learned about synesthesia. I would love to hear your thoughts about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChristinaTherese Posted July 31, 2013 Author Share Posted July 31, 2013 Well, I haven't spent enough time analyzing the colors in Spanish to really know. But as I look at things, the /a/ (I'm sorry, I don't know very much about IPA for vowels yet, so they're going to be crudely stated) in Spanish is a lighter color than the /a/ in English. It's also a more forward vowel. I've heard/read about people having different colors for letters in different languages, but I don't know anything about the method to the madness or if there is a normal method to the madness or what. I'd love to do research, but I doubt that I will, except maybe a little bit if I can in undergrad, since I think I'll be cloistered and probably sooner than later. (*chough* St. Edith Stein/Teresa Benedicta *cough*... In other words, who knows.) And I've never read that book... and I don't own it... but it looks wonderful and maybe I'll get my hands on it. Something weird I noticed yesterday: I was talking to a guy on the phone, of an unknown ethnicity with a native tongue other than English (or at the most a 2nd generation immigrant), and wondering if his accent was Hispanic. I would have naturally assumed so, since he was calling to ask my mom about interpreting for something, but I thought "No, his accent is dark, but it's slightly the wrong color. I don't know what that shade is doing in there." It seemed to be made up of two different colors.... I haven't noticed that sort of thing before, at least not consciously. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 That is pretty cool that you can almost identify an accent by the colors. Maybe he was from another spanish speaking country hence the slighly different shade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChristinaTherese Posted July 31, 2013 Author Share Posted July 31, 2013 Yeah.... I don't know. It's never happened before. But then again, I haven't been analyzing accents very much either. Maybe I'll try to do that more.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted August 4, 2013 Share Posted August 4, 2013 I saw on the reading thread you finished "A Mango Shaped Space" what did you think of it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChristinaTherese Posted August 4, 2013 Author Share Posted August 4, 2013 I'll give you a review when I don't have to type on my phone. Our internet is down for a bit.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheresaThoma Posted August 4, 2013 Share Posted August 4, 2013 Ok! (Yuck about the internet though!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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