Kate: Hello and welcome to this week's 6 Minute English. Joining me again today

is Rebecca. Hi Rebecca. Now a little test for you to start the programme

with …could you name the five senses for me?

Rebecca: Well, there's sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

Kate: That's right. Well, today we're talking about synesthesia. This is the name

we give a condition that some people have where their senses are mixed up

or confused.

Rebecca: Yes, I've heard of that – I think the most examples are when people strongly

feel a sense of colour when they hear music or taste something. eg. the taste

of lemon gives someone the strong sense of the colour blue.

Kate: Exactly. Some other examples are seeing or feeling the colours, sexes, and

personalities of letters or numbers and smelling colours and sounds.

Rebecca: Sounds bizarre but I'm looking forward to finding out a little bit more….

Kate: First to my question for this week: is synesthesia more common in men or

women?

Rebecca: answers 

6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009

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Kate: We'll find out the answer at the end of the programme but first to our

speaker for this week, James Wannerton who has the condition, synesthesia.

He's going to explain some more details about what it is and how it affects

him.

Extract 1

We all have five senses, sight, sound, hearing and touch and smell and they all operate

independently of one another, it's just that in certain individuals those two senses are

combined. I mean, for example, someone with synesthesia may smell a shape or they might

hear a touch or in my particular case I actually taste sound.

Rebecca: Wow – he says he can taste sound! I've never heard of that combination

before. Let's find out more:

Extract 2

I've had this since I can remember since I was 4 or 5 and it's been exactly the same. Every

single sound has maintained and kept exactly the same taste.

Rebecca: So he's had the condition since he was 4 or 5 years old and every sound has

kept the same taste. That's interesting…. so what happens if it's a bad word

with bad or negative meaning, something like coffin (which in a box in

which we bury the dead). What kind of taste does he get from this?

Extract 3

It's totally arbitrary – coffin for example tastes like a sweet, a hard-boiled sweet.

Kate: Arbitrary means without reason or something that is based on chance. To

him the word coffin tastes like boiled sweets!

Rebecca: So there must be a few problems having this condition, interesting though it

might be. I can imagine it must be quite lonely in a way – trying to explain

to other people or articulate what he is experiencing. Articulate means to

be able to express something clearly in words. 

6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009

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Kate: Let's listen to the next extract – he also mentions foodstuffs. This is a

general term which refers to any substance used as food or used to make

food. Texture is how something feels so the degree to which something is

rough or smooth, soft or hard. Often tastes and texture are closely related in

how we experience something when we eat it.

Extract 4

I get a lot of tastes that I can't articulate as foodstuffs. I'm getting this fairly complex

mixture of tastes and textures on my tongue. It feels very real to me. The difficulty is

articulating this into a food taste that somebody else can understand.

Rebecca: So he has a problem identifying how something tastes himself.

 

Kate: Yes that must be frustrating. I wonder what other problems he also has? In

the next extract, you'll hear the expressions taste sensatations and

distracting. Can you explain what these mean?

Rebecca: Sure taste sensation is the feeling you get when you taste the flavour of

something and distracting means that something is making it difficult for

you to give it your full attention. Let's listen: what else does he find difficult

about having the condition?

Extract 5

I have a problem with people who speak slowly. It's just the more words that

go in, the more taste sensations I get – it's one after another. It's very distracting … it's quite

difficult to try and take in what someone's saying when you're getting the taste of jelly and

chocolate and stuff all the time.

Kate: He said that when people slowly are clearly, it fills his head with some

many taste senstations that he can't listen to what they're actually saying.

All he can thing about are the tastes he's experiencing – in his case, jelly and

chocolate! 

6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009

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We're nearly out of time, so let's have a quick run through some of the

vocabulary we've met today:

synesthesia - this is the name we give a neurological condition that some

people have where two or more of these senses are mixed up

coffin a box in which we bury the dead

arbitrary means without reason or something based on chance

articulate is to be able to express something clearly in words

foodstuffs - this is a general term which refers to any substance used as food

or used in making food

texture is how something feels so the degree to which something is rough

or smooth, or soft or hard

taste sensation is the feeling you get when you taste the flavour of

something

distracting means something is making it difficult for you to give your full

attention

Kate: And finally to the question I asked earlier. Is the condition more common in

men or in women?

Rebecca: I guessed it was more common in men.

Kate: I'm afraid you were wrong – it's actually much more common in women

According to studies in the US 75% more women have it then men and in

the UK, it's 89%.

Rebecca: That's quite a difference!

Kate: Well, that's all we've got time for today. Thanks for joining us and until next

time. Goodbye!