January blue, February brownish, March is black and white, April green, May black, June yellow, July darker yellow, August dark green, September ochre, October blue, November brown, December black.
Thanks for coming to my synesthesia TED talk.
Like if it's Monday, do you see light brownish everywhere throughout the day? Or is it when you see the word "Monday" written out that the color comes to your mind? And/or if someone says the word "Monday"? If it's Monday and I tell you "want to grab lunch tomorrow", do you see black?
If I tell you that Monday in Japanese is pronounced "nichiyoubi", do you see light brownish when seeing "nichiyoubi" now?
Actually I lied that was Sunday, Monday is pronounced "getsuyoubi" - do you see light brownish when I write "getsuyoubi" now? If not for Japanese and you've learned a foreign language, how long until Monday in that language was light brownish?
Questions coming from legitimate curiosity! I really want to understand what you mean by "Monday is a light brownish". If someone asks me to come up with a color for say March, light green comes to my mind instantly - probably because of the association with spring (same with eg Christmas and red, or January and white) but I don't think I would say that "March is light green", so you're probably talking about something else.
No. If I think of Monday, for example when planning the week, there's a color association. It's also not very bright, but more "a feeling of the color". However, the color has been extremely consistent over the years. If I think of October, like "this person's birthday is in October", there's an association with blue. It's not like the word is colored. It's a mixture of the color and an abstract concept of a month. Hard to explain.
> Monday is pronounced "getsuyoubi" - do you see light brownish when I write "getsuyoubi" now?
If I think of the concept of Monday, the language doesn't matter. I'm native German and "Wednesday" and "Mittwoch" have the same color, even though the first letter is different and letters have their own colors. If I see "getsuyoubi", I focus mostly on the first letter "g" and that gives me a sense of a color. But the first letter and the month names or weekday names don't match necessarily.
> If someone asks me to come up with a color for say March, light green comes to my mind instantly - probably because of the association with spring
Maybe the way how that color comes to your mind instantly is comparable, but it's not as straight forward as "summer = bright, winter = dark". Interestingly, the 4 seasons don't have a very strong color association for me, months have a way stronger association. I don't even know where that color association comes from. Since the color palette seems to be limited and rather mute, I don't think it's because of a specific calendar or something I had as a child. I can only say that the colors in my mind are instant and stay stable over years.
Edit: Thinking about it: numbers don't have a strong association either, but ranges do have. Sometimes not very clearly. 0..10 nothing, 10..20 something blackish, 20..30 bright, like my color for March, 30..40 black or dark blue, 40..50 some kind of brownish orange, 50..60 more red, 60..70 white/grey, 70..80 blueish, 80..90 black, 90..100 grey etc.
Color palette is rather limited for all associations. Mostly black, white/silver, dark blue, dark green, yellowish-beige, orange-brownish with some slight variations.
I guess he still could have done it with eidetic memory or a PAO-style system, but it was still pretty impressive.
Saturday red, Sunday blue, Monday orange, Tuesday purple, Wednesday green, Thursday pink, Friday cyan.
Then I realised that was just the colour scheme used by the Radio Times.
Thanks for coming to this school assembly.
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To explain this with a DCC metaphor:
NEW ACHIEVEMENT: All prime numbers now glow bright orange, including entire mobs (if they contain prime number of living members). This includes those cute little toes of yours, Carl. Don't question this, it just is.
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My favorite Sacks patients were the non-verbal aphasics laughing at Nixon's public TV appearances (because they were experts at telling if people were lying [by laughing at non-verbal cues]), otherwise disconnected from society.