Chinese characters have colours
/ 1 min read
There is a realisation that just hit me recently: To me, Chinese characters have colours. At first, I wasn’t very aware of this, but sometimes when I try to remember the intonation of a word (was it “mā” or “má”, …?) I see the character in my mind having a certain colour.
The characters have the colour in the dictionary app I am using to learn or look up vocabulary: Pleco. For example, whenever I see 呀 I see a green 呀.
These are the exact colours I associate with the intonations of Chinese language:
- mā:
#e30000 - má:
#01b31c - mǎ:
#150ff0 - mà:
#8800bf - ma:
#777777
It is interesting to realise how my brain was conditioned to associate those tones with a colour. I don’t see any downside, heck, it even helps me sometimes remember what the correct intonation is.