91–98 of 98 posts
Many years ago, I wrote a blog -- no longer online, I'm afraid -- about how I associated different programming languages with different shapes. I've never heard of this effect before today, but it visualises almost perfectly what I was trying to express all those years ago. (I originally posited that it was some form of synaesthesia.) For example, Python has a rounded or smoother shape, whereas C-style languages are…
The primary author of the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar book series, Makino Seiichi, presents a related hypothesis about sound symbolism in Japanese. He identifies a pattern that "hard" sounds like K often appear with words associated with distance between the speaker and the subject, whereas sounds like N are associated with less distance. For instance, the clause nominalizing particle KOTO expresses a more objecti…
But koko/kore/kono vs soko/sore/sono doesn’t seem to match that hypothesis. How do you make sure you’ve got enough examples to prove the argument?
What is clear is that the hypothesis cannot be some strawman like "every corner of the Japanese language exhibits hard/soft sound symbolism: every grammar construct, every vocabulary item, ...".
How much there has to be to separate a trend from coincidence is beyond me, but ways of quantifying it suggest themselves. For instance, frequency of occurrence of sound-symbolic constructs in speech.
Some pretty common devices fit this pattern. Another one is kara (strong assertion of causality) versus no de (weak assertion of causality). Words like koto, kara, keredomo and the question particle ka come up all the time, as do no, node, noni and so on.
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Nope, it doesn't need to be a ring. I was deep into synesthesia stuff when I worked at UCSD and had a friend participate in an experiment at VS Ramachandran's lab and one of the neat things is that a lot of the commonalities are culturally or temporally specific. Many of the people with numeric synesthesia use a ring because they resemble CLOCKS! 1-12 is a common pattern and most people with synesthesia that grew up…
So couple of things might have helped shape the way I assign colors or structure to things. At least that's my theory - For numbers and letters, I think that might've come from pre-school alphabet or numbers book. I've always pictured the letter 'A' as always being yellow. B was always red , then C was green, D was orange , E as kind of purple, F as pink and so on. For numbers Zero was always white, 1 being black, 5…
Do you have any interesting color overlaps between letters and numbers? I'm noticing that the fifth letter E (I'm assuming english, apologies if not!) is of a similar shade (purple / blue) as the number five!
One of the canonical tests to "prove" synesthesia is real involved putting a bunch of 5s and Ss randomly on a page and those with synesthesia could quickly distinguish between the two. It's always fascinating that the shape of the letter/number wasn't part (necessarily) of the color sense, and that they still stayed distinct, so just curious if you've noticed any overlaps/influences between letters and numbers or if they tend to tickle a totally different color sense.
Simply imagine what sound a 3D-object of the shape as in the WP-article would make. The star-shaped object would make a "spiky" sound, the bubble-like object more of a bump-like sound. That explains the attribution of the words kiki and bouba to the objects in different cultures. My explanation.
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So couple of things might have helped shape the way I assign colors or structure to things. At least that's my theory - For numbers and letters, I think that might've come from pre-school alphabet or numbers book. I've always pictured the letter 'A' as always being yellow. B was always red , then C was green, D was orange , E as kind of purple, F as pink and so on. For numbers Zero was always white, 1 being black, 5…
That's fascinating, thanks so much for sharing, definitely sounds like synesthesia - I've known several people who've had various types of synesthesia, though none that were alphanumerical, it's always fascinating to learn how wildly different people's experiences are with just... living :) Do you have any interesting color overlaps between letters and numbers? I'm noticing that the fifth letter E (I'm assuming engli…
Finally 8 and H are both brown and oddly exact same color. Not sure if its because H is also the 8th letter in the alphabet.
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That's fascinating, thanks so much for sharing, definitely sounds like synesthesia - I've known several people who've had various types of synesthesia, though none that were alphanumerical, it's always fascinating to learn how wildly different people's experiences are with just... living :) Do you have any interesting color overlaps between letters and numbers? I'm noticing that the fifth letter E (I'm assuming engli…
Yes. Definately some overlap. Just as you stated, the number 3. It's similar color as letter E. A Purple-maroon shade. Also S and 5 are somewhat similar. Both are blue-ish. No overlap on number 6. Its always light blue. Same for 7, its always green. Finally 8 and H are both brown and oddly exact same color. Not sure if its because H is also the 8th letter in the alphabet.
The primary author of the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar book series, Makino Seiichi, presents a related hypothesis about sound symbolism in Japanese. He identifies a pattern that "hard" sounds like K often appear with words associated with distance between the speaker and the subject, whereas sounds like N are associated with less distance. For instance, the clause nominalizing particle KOTO expresses a more objecti…
Fun coincidence: snake in Zulu is inyoka or nyova