Japanese Synesthesia
I saw a really neat segment from Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) 2007 today featuring Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran. I think I first saw him in a marvelous documentary about Daniel Tammet called The Boy with the Incredible Brain (full documentary). Anyway, in his absolutely fascinating 23 minute 46 second long talk, he covered the Capgras delusion (where a patient is convinced that people or pets with which an emotional connection is shared has been replaced by an imposter despite recognizing the person), the phenomenon of phantom limbs, and synesthesia. Synesthesia is a captivating subject for me. Anyway, I’ve isolated a part of the talk where Dr. Ramachandran does a neat little demonstration. It worked for me. See if it works for you.
Now, my question is – linguistically, would this work across the board with speakers of other languages. Is the “buba / kiki” association valid only within social pools that share phonemes or root languages? Or is the association something unrelated to language, and more basic? Specifically, I’m curious about Japanese, because I know that time and time again I’ve bashed my head against onomatopoeic words that either oppose my imagery or are at least incongruous with my brain. This could be purely a personal thing, but it really makes you wonder. The voiced / non-voiced character system implies a hard / soft dichotomy, but would it carry over synesthetically? In a metaphoric sense? I have a feeling that it’s a sociolinguistic cultural thing. I dunno. Would the “Martian Alphabet” experiment work here? Curious. Most curious. Reminds me of a hilariously fudged term paper I wrote about periodical publications in Japan chose fonts that feminize the masculine kanji writing system via font choices, only more respectable.
By the way, the only other talk that I’ve seen so far and been enthralled by was given by space entrepreneur Burt Rutan. Disclosure: in the story that I’m continuing to write, I have a synesthetic character, and finished describing the period that Mr. Rutan discusses in his talk. Maybe that’s why I’m so interested. 
Alright – gotta go ride through the ice cold rain for an hour to teach 2 classes and come home the same way. Yaaaay. Not.
