Nope, they all look black to me.

Out of interest, if someone wrote the letter A on a red piece of paper what do you see? And is a the same colour as A?

So, for instance, a black A on red paper?

Well, it's definitely easier to see the colors on grayscale tones. For letters that look red, being written in black on a red background just makes them look black. For non-red letters, being written in black on a red background doesn't seem to remove their color, but makes it less obvious.

For some characters, the association is stronger. For instance, the letter K is especially green. 3, 4, and 5 are especially orange, brown, and yellow.

a is the same color as A. In fact, α (greek alpha) is also. I'm almost certain that capitals and lowercase letters have the same color in all cases. But in some cases the colors have slightly different shades. For instance, lowercase L (which is blue) looks a lot like uppercase I in most fonts. So lowercase L is a darker shade of blue than uppercase L. Also, for whatever reason, e is considerably oranger than E.

Amazing. If you had found someone with the same way of seeing things at school the potential for writing unbreakable secret messages would have been immense! The benefits post-school are perhaps less obvious...

i kind of got the same thing with notes, though not that strong as you, rather a feeling than an actual vision of the colour. congrats to you though, this is truly amazing. you could try to write a rainbow book!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan_(anime)

You might find this anime interesting. It is about the Chinese government (with help from 'Murika) genetically engineering people with complete Synesthesia (all 5 senses are combined).

Would you be willing to list the alphabet in the ROYGBIV order you see it?

Interesting.
Can you tell what colour something is actually written in?
Does it work with handwritings too?

What I mean with that first question is, for example:
Can you tell that the thread title is 'actually' green, even though you see it in various colours?

Interesting, I would love to know if you experience other sights and sounds differently, but I can't think of a way to determine that besides explaining how I see and experience everything, since you wouldn't know that the way you perceive something is different from the "norm".

How did you discover that the way you experience numbers and letters was unique?

I think I have had some sort of synesthesia. But, it is a cross between hearing and tasting. At certain words, I can taste different tastes. Does anyone else have that?

@PSM - here is a link to a guy who tastes each of the London Tube stations, he has completed a map

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24990432

When I was very young, I had emotions tied to colours.

You can look in Wiki for the different names of common types of synesthesia.

Is there one with different colours associated with different names? A form of synesthesia in which Theodosius is dark blue and Thucydides is a pale pink with yellow spots, green zig-zags and purple spirals could be rather useful.

Grapheme or possibly Ideasthesia or LSDesthesia.

I prefer it this way, though :)

@abgemact,
The plusses represent particularly strong associations, the minuses represent particularly weak associations

In alpha-numeric order:

Aa = +Red
Bb = Blue
Cc = Yellow
Dd = Gold
Ee = Orange
Ff = Light-Blue
Gg = Puce
Hh = -Teal
Ii = Black
Jj = -Dim Gold
Kk = +Green
Ll = Dark-Blue
Mm = Dark-Purple/Dark-Blue
Nn = Green
Oo = White
Pp = Red-Pink
Qq = Dark-Pink
Rr = Green
Ss = -Pinkish
Tt = Black
Uu = Gold
Vv = Orange
Ww = -Dark-Purple
Xx = -Gray/Steely-Blue
Yy = +Green
Zz = -Black/Gray

0 = White
1 = Black
2 = Green
3 = +Orange
4 = +Brown/Dark-Gold
5 = +Yellow
6 = Red
7 = -Tealish
8 = Purple
9 = Pink

In Rainbowish order:

0 = White
Oo = White
Xx = -Gray/Steely-Blue
Zz = -Black/Gray
Tt = Black
Ii = Black
1 = Black

Ss = -Pinkish
9 = Pink
Gg = Puce
Pp = Red-Pink
Aa = +Red
6 = Red
Ee = Orange
3 = +Orange
Vv = Orange
4 = +Brown/Dark-Gold
Dd = Gold
Uu = Gold
Jj = -Dim Gold
5 = +Yellow
Cc = Yellow
2 = Green
Yy = +Green
Kk = +Green
Rr = Green
Nn = Green
7 = -Tealish
Hh = -Teal
Ff = Light-Blue
Bb = Blue
Ll = Dark-Blue
Mm = Dark-Purple/Dark-Blue
8 = Purple
Ww = -Dark-Purple
Qq = Dark-Pink

Well, this was a good exercise. I never had written them out like this...
Hopefully, some of the formatting was preserved...

@steephie,
Yes, I can clearly tell if something is written in Green ink vs Blue. When I read something, I only see the colors faintly - and only in my area of focus (a page of black writing would look black in the fringes of my vision). It’s more like the idea of the letter A, for me, is clearly red. If I think about the idea of A, it is very red.
It does work with handwritings too.

@jmo,
I’ve kind of always known that I experience characters in this way. There are some cases (like 345) which looks vibrantly orange-brown-yellow. I remember thinking about cases like that at a time when I was probably earlier than 10 years of age. Every once and a while something strikes me as being especially colorful. For instance, in a bit of code, I was changing some variable to k and was stunned at how green the code looked afterward. Another example is 2009, which looks stunningly green-white-white-pink.
But I didn’t know until recently (or never really asked) whether others perceive characters similarly. It was only after talking with a friend about how I knew a character from a book by the Pinkish-Red color of his first name and Orangish color of his last name (without knowing how to spell or pronounce it) that she remarked “You must have Synesthesia.” So now I know...

@Octavious,
Theodosius looks whiter and Thucydides looks Yellow-Greener.

The rainbow connection.

I'm on my phone but I remember their being an onion bews network video on this.

Anyone want to link it?

Sure enough, Fasces... http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-blue-of-americans-suffer-from-synesthesia,34983/

And, come to think of it, Z looks more Dim-Gold than Black/Gray...

Wow, this is fascinating stuff.

From wiki:
"While different individuals usually do not report the same colors for all letters and numbers, studies with large numbers of synesthetes find some commonalities across letters (e.g. A is likely to be red)"

This is really one of those things that proves we don't know shit about the brain.

My sense of color isn't great, but if anyone is interested:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ipyh3O0haRyYWrhKMiv3g1A9U3hqxhzy1IQqke2kzRo/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks, abgemacht, I probably should have done that in the first place... Could you enable it for editing - some of the colors aren't the precise shade I perceive. e.g. 9 is more of a hot pink (and I probably should have described it as that).

Also from the wiki, @Minister,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Number_Form--colored.jpg

I notice that this person, like myself, perceives zero as white and one is black - showing that synesthesia is at least somewhat logic-based.

The colors are so difficult to get perfect... http://puu.sh/8WaJe.pdf

Does it work the other way around too? Do you associate red with A?

Nope. Only one way, usually...
But some sequences of colors heavily reminds me of sequences of characters. For instance, orange-brown-yellow would remind me of 345. But it isn't a strong association.

What about irrational numbers? Is it just their decimal expansion? Or does pi (for example) have a color?

And can you use it to tell how good your brain is natively at math? Do you ever see a math problem and see the color of an answer before you "know" the answer?

So you wouldn't be able to 'read' a colour-coded message, like you would read a word? Would you be able to decipher a colour-coded message without help from the PDF for example, or would you forget which letter belongs to which colour for example?

@semck83
It's isn't the numbers that the characters represent that I associate with colors, it is the characters themselves. √(2), for instance, just looks like a greenish two surrounded by black punctuation marks. Its decimal approximation, 1.41421..., looks like black-brown-black-brown-green-black... The greek pi doesn't seem to have an association for me.

There are some examples of patterns of colors that stand out in simple math problems. Green + light-blue = pink => 2 + 7 = 9. But I don't think it helps me especially with simple arithmetic. Quite honestly, even as a Math major, I'm quite shoddy at arithmetic.

@steephie22
No, it isn't like that. I associate the characters with colors, not cover their true color with my imagination. If there is a black A, I will know that it is colored black, but there's also a sixth-sense haze over it that makes it look red. The idea of the letter A, however, (not seen with my eyes) is a vivid red.

Fascinating. It may be an interesting mnemonic as well, helping you remember stuff by other associations that us mere mortals don't have.

Your example of 345 made me think of an interesting real-life example, do you associate this image with certain characters?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Belgium