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Method of loci questions

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Josh Cohen
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United States
mnemotechnics.org/
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Studies: Portuguese, Esperanto

 
 Message 81 of 89
22 September 2011 at 11:12pm | IP Logged 
Aquila wrote:
...I find it very hard to memorize abstract words. It's very difficult to be creative and to make a funny scene with an abstract concept. How do you tackle this problem?


Could you post a few example words? I could then post sample mnemonic images.
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Aquila
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 Message 82 of 89
23 September 2011 at 6:11pm | IP Logged 
Maybe it's just a matter of being creative. In French, I had difficulties to remember words like "la brusquerie"
(rudeness), "capricieux" (inconstant), "etreindre" (to embrace - in this case there are two verbs with similar sounds:
"entendre" and "eteindre"). I can't find Dutch words with a comparable sound as the words I want to learn.

It's even harder to make visualizations of Russian words for example "крестьянин" (krestjanin = farmer) and
"предупреждение" (preduprezjdjenye = warning). And in Esperanto, I had major problems to memorize the words
"sekvi" (to follow) and "edzo"/"edzino" (husband, wife).


Edited by Aquila on 23 September 2011 at 6:12pm

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montmorency
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 Message 83 of 89
23 September 2011 at 8:57pm | IP Logged 
Doitsujin wrote:

Also most other memorization disciplines are little more than amusing parlor tricks with little practical use.

BTW, here's a link to the Mentat Wiki, which contains a nice summary of memory techniques, some of which I use myself.


Sorry, this is an old-ish posting, but I couldn't help notice that your last sentence slightly contradicts your previous one, or have I misunderstood you?

That's an interesting link, anyway. I like the piece on remembering facts.
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Doitsujin
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 Message 84 of 89
23 September 2011 at 9:27pm | IP Logged 
montmorency wrote:
Doitsujin wrote:

Also most other memorization disciplines are little more than amusing parlor tricks with little practical use.

BTW, here's a link to the Mentat Wiki, which contains a nice summary of memory techniques, some of which I use myself.


Sorry, this is an old-ish posting, but I couldn't help notice that your last sentence slightly contradicts your previous one, or have I misunderstood you?

That's an interesting link, anyway. I like the piece on remembering facts.


My original post was in reference to Sludido's posts. Slucido kept pointing out memory world records without realizing that most of these "disciplines" are utterly useless for language learning, because they're all a variation of learning a list of items and their order.
IMHO, many "mental athletes" seem to spend a lot of time trying to come up with more efficient methods for memorizing decks of playing cards or memorizing pi to the umpteenth digit, however, very few seem to be interested in developing new memory techniques for real world problems.
Except for Josh Cohen's posts in this thread I have yet to see a leading "mental athlete" who comes up with innovative methods for remembering abstract facts or vocabulary beyond the methods described in pretty much every "How to improve your memory" book.

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Josh Cohen
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United States
mnemotechnics.org/
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Portuguese, Esperanto

 
 Message 85 of 89
23 September 2011 at 10:49pm | IP Logged 
Aquila wrote:
Maybe it's just a matter of being creative. In French, I had difficulties to remember words like "la brusquerie" (rudeness), "capricieux" (inconstant), "etreindre" (to embrace - in this case there are two verbs with similar sounds: "entendre" and "eteindre"). I can't find Dutch words with a comparable sound as the words I want to learn.


I don't know how to pronounce French, but based on the spelling:

Brusquerie reminds me of:
brusque
brews (beers)
brush

and
quiero (I want in Spanish)

So my image would be:
Brews-quiero (rudely saying, "I want some beers")

It only needs to makes sense to you.

Capricieux reminds me of Paginini's 24 caprice. The violin player keeps changing the pieces during the performance without reason (inconstant).

Etreindre reminds me of "enter" and "India" and "ray". Maybe the image could be entering the Taj Mahal where a ray of light is beaming down from the ceiling. The ray is physically solid when embraced.

Does entendre mean understand? That verb is probably easy to remember without techniques because it is used so often. Otherwise, it looks to me like en-tender: to make something tender. A mnemonic image might be: a world where no one understands you unless you put steaks on their heads and pound the steaks with a meat tenderizer while talking to them.

The weirder the images, the more memorable they are.

Aquila wrote:
"предупреждение" (preduprezjdjenye = warning).


I would break it up:
pre-desPrez-Jenny

Before des Prez, there was "Jenny" (an imaginary 15th century pop singer who was known for music videos where she holds up a yellow warning sign in every clip).

Aquila wrote:
And in Esperanto, I had major problems to memorize the words
"sekvi" (to follow) and "edzo"/"edzino" (husband, wife).


Edzo sounds like adze. It's a noun, so it has to end in -o. The husband could be holding an adze:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/American_Goth ic

Edzino is created from grammatical rules, so it's easier to just memorize the grammar. The suffix -in- makes it feminine.

Sekvi reminds me of "secretary" and V. Replace Natalie Portman with a secretary.

Doitsujin wrote:
Except for Josh Cohen's posts in this thread I have yet to see a leading "mental athlete" who comes up with innovative methods for remembering abstract facts or vocabulary beyond the methods described in pretty much every "How to improve your memory" book.


I'm not a competitor yet -- still working on it. :)

Edited by Josh Cohen on 23 September 2011 at 10:56pm

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Aquila
Triglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
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 Message 86 of 89
24 September 2011 at 12:04pm | IP Logged 
Thank you for the examples Josh. I believe this way of memorizing requires just a lot of practice. Do you know if
there are also other ways than the "town method" to "store" the mnemonic images?
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Doitsujin
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 Message 87 of 89
24 September 2011 at 3:01pm | IP Logged 
Aquila wrote:
Maybe it's just a matter of being creative. In French, I had difficulties to remember words like "la brusquerie"
(rudeness), "capricieux" (inconstant), "etreindre" (to embrace - in this case there are two verbs with similar sounds:
"entendre" and "eteindre").

It's even harder to make visualizations of Russian words for example "крестьянин" (krestjanin = farmer) and
"предупреждение" (preduprezjdjenye = warning).

It sometimes helps to break-down longer words into their constituents or into pseudo-constituents. (By pseudo-constituents I mean that I sometimes use "folk etymology" if it helps me to better memorize a word.) This doesn't work with all languages and all words, but I often found it helpful.

For example, if I saw brusquerie I would remember that brusque means (among other things) "rude" and that I've seen -(e)rie in many other French nouns. E.g rêverie (=daydreams). I'd also link it to the German cognate "brüskiert".

As for "предупреждение" (=warning, notice), I'd instinctively break it up into the common prefix "пред-" (before) and "упреждение" (advance, prediction). Admittedly, this doesn't help much with this noun, but if you take words such as безопасность (=security) and know that "без" means without and that "-ость" is a common noun suffix then you already know that it has to be a noun. If you then also remember that you once saw the marking "огнеопасно" (=flammable) on a gasoline tanker truck, it should be easy to remember that in Russian "security" basically means the absence of danger etc. (огне is the prepositional form of огонь = fire.)
For Russian, it definitely pays off to learn the meaning of some common prefixes and suffixes.
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Aquila
Triglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 5482 days ago

104 posts - 128 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, German
Studies: French

 
 Message 88 of 89
24 September 2011 at 3:47pm | IP Logged 
Doitsujin wrote:

For example, if I saw brusquerie I would remember that brusque means (among
other things) "rude" and that I've seen -(e)rie in many other French nouns. E.g rêverie
(=daydreams). I'd also link it to the German cognate "brüskiert".

Doitsujin wrote:

For Russian, it definitely pays off to learn the meaning of some common prefixes and suffixes.


Where would you store a word like this in a loci-town or palace? And how do you visualize suffixes like -erie, -ние
and -ость?






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