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What's your superpower? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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[-] Nangijala@feddit.dk 23 points 1 month ago

I have a few different versions of synesthesia.

The most prominent one is that is see words and letters in color. If you tell me your name I can more or less paint your name like a weird color code. Whenever it is brought up it's almost like a fun little party trick where people ask me what color their names are and I tell them.

Spoiler alert, though: if your name has A or S in it, it will most likely have red in the mix. M and N are differnet variations of green. Some letters are dominant and others are submissive so depending on the word they either pain other letters a specific color or take color from dominant letters. E is a submissive letter. Tends to be a pale yellow, but will change color depending on the letters it is put together with. D is a weird dominant letter that changes color all the time. Either black or a deep purple. Completely depends on the word.

Numbers have colors too.

0 - white

1 - black

2 - pale yellow

3 - sky blue

4 - red

5 - dark brown

6 - black

7 - yellow

8 - dark purple

9 - orange

Random names and their colors:

Jack = black and red, white and black again.

Stephanie = red, yellow, green and yellowish white

Peter = gold and black

Mary = forest green, red, black and orangy yellow

Robert = black, white black

Lily = white, silver, yellow like sunshine

William = black, white, red, forest green

Karen = black, red, black, a sprinkle of yellow and spring green.

Russell = black, golden yellow, red, yellow

Evelyn = sunshine yellow, white and spring green.

Etc etc

To me, pretty names are not just pretty if they sound good, they also have to have beautiful and unique color combinations. Most names tend to have red and green color combos for me so whenever yellow, blue, purple or pink appear in a name I really like it. In my country there's a man's name Åge which isn't the prettiest sounding name, but to me it is so friggin beautiful because it's one of the rarest color combinations I have in my head: dusty blue, morning pink, white, misty overlay and a bit of golden brown. The letter Å is the prettiest letter to me as it is this rare double color of blue and pink and it is a dominant letter so whenever it appears in a name or a word, it is like a breath of fresh air among all the greens and blacks and reds.

[-] musubibreakfast@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

I wonder what would happen if you learned to read and speak Chinese. Would every stroke of a character have a different color, would it just be characters that have different colors? Also how would tones influence colors? Please learn Chinese and report back.

[-] Nangijala@feddit.dk 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Haha yeah, I wouldn't be able to tell you as of now! The closest I get to tell you what it looks like when strokes that stand for different things merge together is with the letter Æ. A is red, E is a pale yellow so Æ is orange, but on a gradient from brown to bright orange. Very pretty letter and very dominant in words.

We also have the letters Ø and Å in my language which stand for "oe" for Ø and "aa" for Å. These are different, though, as their designs don't really show the combination of the letters like it does with Æ. O for me is white, sometimes with a light creamy yellow tint to it. E is, as I said, a pale yellow but Ø is the color of darker amber. A is red, but Å is a dusty blue and light pink, like a morning sky.

So if I learned Chinese, I'm sure the colors of their characters would be very intricate and probably take a different shape too as I'm used to seeing words in horizontal color codes similar to this:

But I suspect that because Chinese words are built more like in boxes, the color combinations would imitate their shapes too and that would be kinda cool to experience, I think. It would still be a largely useless ability, if you can even call it that, because I rarely use my synesthesia for anything other than remembering spellings and such.

[-] Elorie@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

I'm the same way. It makes my memory recall interesting. I remember the colors first and then translate them to numbers or letters. Made a college job as a receptionist interesting.

I also 100% agree on names must look appealing by color. We have different colors, but the similarities are stark.

[-] Nangijala@feddit.dk 2 points 1 month ago

What is a pretty looking name or word to you? Also, what are the colors of the numbers to you? Some synesthetes have really awesome colors while I feel like mine are pretty lame most of the time xD so many black and white and green and red letters. So few yellows and blues and pinks and purples. It's tragic lol.

[-] Elorie@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I don't have a complete favorite, but generally anything with R or M are appealing. Room is one I like - dark green, white and blue-purple.

I have a real mix of colors. Lots of primaries and whites/blacks too, but definitely more blues. For example, A is red, K is bright pink, but then V is fuschia and X is brown. I find it interesting that numbers have their own colors, but the letters than make up the name of the numbers don't match. So 7 is a very pale but intense orange, while s-e-v-e-n are yellow, bright blue, fuschia, and tan.

I'm curious how your color preferences apply to your synesthesia. I personally dislike certain shades of orange and yellow, so J and S get unfairly judged.

[-] Nangijala@feddit.dk 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

That is awesome!! My version of "room" isn't too different from yours, actually! Black, white and dark, rich forest green. Im pretty jealous that you have so many blues and pinks. Urgh, lucky!

And I totally get what you mean! 8 is dark purple but eight is bright yellows and whites, with a bit of beige in there somewhere before ending a little spot of black.

Well, for me, the colors show up in ways that tend to make them appealing or unappealing, so for example, I'm normally indiffernet to a plain orange color, but when I see the letter Æ, it is orange like a sunset. Shining, vibrant, light and shadow ripples through it like leaves in front of the afternoon rays. Almost everytime Æ appears in a word, it gives the word an afternoon, golden hour quality that makes the word prettier than normal. The Danish word længes (longing) pretty much has the color combination of you walking through a beech forest in the afternoon sun in May. The browns, the greens and the orange and the gold makes it one of the most beautiful words in the Danish language to me.

Meanwhile the word lærer (teacher) just has a regular flat orange and is surrounded by blacks and browns and isn't the most appealing word to me for that reason. If the Æ had somehow managed to get the space and support from the other letters to become the afternoon color, then maybe I would like lærer better?

There are other words that are incredibly ugly and either have dull or clashing color combinations like høreapparat (hearing aid) which is a distressing combination of a dry, desaturated brown clashing with a more rich, reddish brown, then black and vibrant red and a yellowish orange and then some reds and blacks at the end. Hideous word. Any time r's, a's, ø's and h's are put together I see puke colors and we have those letter combinations in plenty Danish words so that's fun. And yet, sometimes it just works too. Ørsted is sleek. The brown is almost consumed in a pure black, the red is bold and fresh and there's a little spark of a pale morning yellow in there to give it a bit of life. When the colors are clean, I like it. But with høreapparat, it's just muddy, ugly colors that don't fit together at all.

My personal favourite color is green, but I have so many green words and in various shades of green too, that I am bored of green when it comes to my synesthesia. Pinks, blues and purples are much more interesting to me in that context because they are so rare.

[-] werewolfborg@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

If I get drunk, I can picture colors for different instruments. Drums, wind, and string instruments are varying shades of red, yellow and orange depending on pitch. Synthesizers are always cool colors depending on their sound. The more artificial they sound, the further away they are from yellow or red for purple and green synthesizers) Human voices are pink if high pitched and red if low pitched.

[-] Nangijala@feddit.dk 1 points 1 month ago

Aw man. I have always wanted music based synesthesia. I knew someone who saw colors when she listened to music too and she tried to paint a few different songs at one point. It was so interesting.

I'm a bit jelly of you xD it must be friggin awesome to see colors when listening to music.

[-] MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.org 1 points 1 month ago

Does the coloring of numbers help or hinder your understanding of maths?

[-] Nangijala@feddit.dk 2 points 1 month ago

In my case it does nothing for my understanding of math. I am pretty bad at math so my synesthesia would only benefit me with numbers if I was good at calculating things in my head. Then I would probably see the color of the number before getting the facit.

With words it can be helpful with spellings. If I or someone else misspell a word I see it immediately because the color is wrong. This is also how I remember people's names. I tend to ask people how their names are spelled so I see their colors correctly. To me, that's part of knowing someone. If I haven't seen someone's name written in front of me, they won't have a color and I then tend to forget their names, which is super awkward sometimes.

With some words that can be spelled in different ways, I prefer some spellings over others because the color is prettier or more appropriate.

For example with gray and grey I prefer grey because the color of that word is light grey and a very light yellow. Gray is a dark, denatured brown and red. I don't like it as much.

But yeah, when it comes to math, it does almost nothing for me because I'm not mathematically gifted at all.

[-] MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.org 1 points 1 month ago

Really interesting. I allways wonder whether some mathematical geniuses were able to see way more then just numbers and I could imagine color might be a useful tool when you get into the weird stuff. Thank you for sharing.. That was really interesting.

[-] Nangijala@feddit.dk 1 points 1 month ago

I am sure there are some of those out there! I saw a guy online who had color and shape based synesthesia with letters and numbers and he had built is own alphabet from that and actively used it for note-taking. He seemed exceptionally intelligent and his notes were a complete trip to look at. Some people called him schizophrenic in the comments because they didn't understand it, but it was very clear to see that there was a logic and a system to his alphabet and his notes that wouldn't have been there if he had schizophrenia. People fear what they don't understand xD

I wish I could remember where I saw that. It was awhile ago. It was so cool.

From what I have been able to tell, many people with synesthesia are either artists or scientists. I'm sure there are also bankers and accountants with this affliction out there, but I guess you don't hear about them as much as they don't tend to become famous.

[-] rpl6475@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

Me and my brother have colours for numbers, days, and months. My numbers are strongly linked to the first 5 Thunderbirds (I doubt that is a coincidence)

[-] Nangijala@feddit.dk 1 points 1 month ago

In that sense there is a logic to synesthesia. It's often sensory inputs experienced in childhood that gets mixed up and associated with one another so the fact that the thunderbirds have affected your number colors makes complete sense to me!

I'm pretty sure that A is red and B is blue to me because vocals are usually marked with red and consonants are marked with blue so the fact that the first two letters of the alphabet adheres to that rule makes sense to me. But I couldn't tell you why C is a pastel yellow, D is a blackish purple or why E is pale, almost white yellow etc.

this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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