Happy Catholic links to an article about synesthesia and also to an earlier post about her daughter Hannah’s type of synesthesia:
I was at out with my daughters, Hannah and Rose, recently when Hannah suddenly turned to us and said, "When I hear words it means a kind of food in my head." We said, "Huh?" (so eloquent). It turns out that ever since she can remember most words link to a food texture and image in her head. For example "also" is pretzels, "mother" is chocolate milk, "listen" is orange Triaminic. It isn’t always food and it doesn’t happen with every single word (for instance "squirrel" is just a squirrel) but it happens for practically every word she hears.
I have read about synesthesia before, and I’ve always wondered what it would be like, although I’ve never met anyone in person who fessed up to being a synesthete. The verbal/food crosswiring was one I had never heard of before, so I was reading the post about Hannah with interest as if I were reading about some strange and exotic country, when I got to this part:
It has turned into a parlor trick where she will suddenly say, "’Julie’ is pecan pie" or "’lady’ is heavy folds of a skirt."
…and suddenly I was dropped in my own neighborhood. Oh my gosh, I thought. When she says "lady" is heavy folds of a skirt I know exactly what she means. I know exactly how "lady’"can be heavy folds of a skirt.
Except it isn’t (for me) heavy folds of a skirt, it’s a shawl, and hair in ringlets, cascading down over shoulders.
This was a little bit of a shock to me. And I’m still not exactly sure this "counts"—I’m not about to call myself a synesthete or anything, I think I should talk to an expert first. But there has something else inside the words on the pages I read, and I never knew exactly how to put it until I read that sentence above. It’s the first thing I’ve ever read a synesthete say that made sense to me.
The "something else inside the word" always seems to me to have a logical connection to the meaning of the word (for example, the shawl, shoulders, and ringlets are part of a picture of a ‘lady’ that I carry in my head) but it is inextricably linked with the shape of the word as it appears on the page. And that something else is not a texture; it’s kind of a motion or gesture, often with surfaces sliding past one another, though, so the texture of the surfaces are involved.
It wouldn’t be far off to say that there is a sign for every word, which does not correspond to any real sign language, but only the one in my head. Sometimes there is a sort of facial expression along with it.
Happy Catholic says that for her daughter the food-sensations are stronger when she says the word than when she hears it. For me, the motion/gestures/whatever appear only when I read the word, or imagine its appearance on a page of text. And it’s stronger with typeset text than with handwritten text.
It’s devilishly hard to describe the kinetics I’m thinking of here. Ironically, it seems almost impossible to translate them into words on a page. But some of them pop up easily. I mean, when I thought, "let’s try to write some of these down," I immediately thought, "Oh, do ‘glasses’ first, that’s an easy one."
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glasses is a folding up of spindly, clicking jointed things
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sign is a hand held up, rotating at the wrist and being pulled downward at the same time
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moth is… Ever played Hungry Hungry Hippos? "moth" is a grabbing motion like the one the hippo heads make.
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fathered is a man’s hand sliding over the outside of his own thigh.
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interest is a raising of eyebrows.
Words that have two very different meanings have only one kinetic association. So, in "He’s paying six and a half percent interest" and "He followed the discussion with interest," the word interest moves in the same way. Or take "he has a still in his back yard" vs. "he still hasn’t paid me back" vs. "the waters were calm and still." Still is always the same: in place, vibrating gently.
And words that have similar spellings sometimes move similarly. For example, fathered and lathered are not far apart. And ladle is a little bit like lady. And wart is a smaller, truncated version of war. Synonyms aren’t necessarily related, though.
When I went through the English words for integers one through twelve, I found that many of them are motions and gestures performed by children "of about that age." I also wrote down a few French words and observed that they are not the same as their English counterparts.
This is something I’m going to have to think about a lot more!
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