Why Do We Associate Colours With Vowels? Know The Details

Does [a:] as in 'baa' sound greener or redder? And is [i:] as in 'beet' light or dark in colour? Nevertheless we see speech and colour are apparent with not the same sensory organs, nearly everyone has an impression of what colours and vowels fit with each other. There is a system for doing so, for a large number of us. This is shown in research by linguists from Radboud University and the University of Edinburgh on similarities in the vowel-colour associations perceived by over 1,000 people.

Vladimir Nabokov, the writer perceived "ee" as yellow and "aa" as the colour of polished ebony. Nabokov had synaesthesia: his sensory acuities intermingled with one another. In his case, he saw colours when hearing certain vowels, but many forms of synaesthesia are possible. Only 1 out of 25 people have synaesthesia, but this new research indicates that certain intuitions about "sound colours" are shared by many more people than this.

"Aa" is more red than green

In this research, more than 1,000 people took part in an online test where they chose colours for 16 vocal vowels. A large majority felt that "aa" was more of red couluor than green, and "ee" more of light than dark, irrespective of having synaesthesia or not. One of the researchers, Mark Dingemanse, believes, "There seems to be logic to how we link sound and colour, and the structure of language has an important role in this process."

Vowel space

Sixteen vowels sounds like a lot, but it works like this. When you say "aa," then move to "oo" as in boot and then to "ee" as in beet, Dingemanse explains, you have visited the three outer points of what linguists call the vowel space. Over this space the 16 spoken sounds in our study were evenly distributed

Vowel system dictates colour associations

Earlier studies have established that colour connotations are linked to the pitch of the sounds: the higher the pitch, the lighter the colour. But the new study shows that colour connotations are determined to a greater degree by the vowel system of a dialect. For example, many contestants defined sounds that were close to the Dutch vowel "ee" as light green, although nearby sounds similar to "ay" as in ‘say’ were allocated a different colour. The connotations are shaped according to how our language carves up the vowel space.

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190404114434.htm