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Phenomenal Memory | ||
Tags: Memory | Learning Technique/Method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6497 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 33 of 49 03 October 2010 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I use 'funny stories' as I call them in a few cases, but when I memorize words (for instance while doing wordlists) I tend to prefer less colourful memory hooks.
With totally unknown words I have found it effective to remember a Danish phrase where one foreign word has been substitued for a Danish one. It is much easier to remember things that aren't totally goobledeepük. And for the same reason I don't try to avoid translations of word or phrases, even if they don't cover all of the meaning. For the same reason I'm against the use of monolingual dictionaries, unless they have so extensive explanations that they effectively teach you a whole subject. I also routinely break up words and phrases in their components. It is much easier to remember something long and complicated if your know the components, even if the complete thing means something you couldn't guess from the components. I don't try to learn all facts of the meaning or uses of a word or phrase the first time I meet it. Learn a core meaning first, and when that has been firmly engrained into your circuits it becomes much easier to add to your knowledge later. I often associate words with known terms on the basis of just a part of the word or a vague similarity - I can't see that it is so much more effective to search for a 'funny story' that covers everything, which may take time and effort that could have been spent on learning more words. Edited by Iversen on 03 October 2010 at 5:24pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4967 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 34 of 49 03 October 2010 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you, Iversen ,for your kind advice. Your "funny story" method reminds me of A. S. Luria's "Mind of a Mnemonist," which I have read in English translation, about the man S - something like Sheroshoviskii - who could not forget anything, due to a very unusual brain. He used to use something similar, I believe and couldn't help but see things when anyone spoke. He also had synaesthesia so "saw" sounds in the jumbled sensory way such people do.
Talking of multiple meanings, have you ever tried to learn a dictionary? This was inspired by a claim Schliemann is supposed to have made about learning an entire Turkish dictionary. I did - in my case it wasn't such a great success! Edited by Old Chemist on 03 October 2010 at 2:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6497 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 35 of 49 03 October 2010 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Learn a dictionary? I could probably learn the last few unknown words in a standard Danish or English dictionary by a dedicated "mopping-up operation", but even if I ended up knowing all words in those dictionaries it wouldn't be "learning a dictionary" because I would have learnt the words at different times and through different methods. I doubt that starting out with A and ending with Z a couple of months later would be worth the effort. And I'm notoriously bad at learning texts by heart, so I am certain I couldn't learn a whole dictionary verbatim. Edited by Iversen on 03 October 2010 at 5:08pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4967 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 36 of 49 03 October 2010 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ha ha! I'm glad to hear you, with a great amount of experience in learning languages, say you find it difficult to learn texts - this is certainly true for me. The dictionary experiment will probably make me sound rather silly, but here goes: I got a bilingual English-Italian dictionary and read it all on to tape - it was that long ago - and it amounted to fair number of C90 audio tapes. It was certainly a time when I didn't get out much. The tapes? I didn't really use them and gave them away to charity. If it is true, I'd love to know how Schliemann did learn that dictionary! I do get the impression that he may have exaggerated some of his achievements, although they certainly weren't to be scoffed at.
I think you are right, the exercise would be pointless. I doubt whether most of us would be able to mentally leaf through a totally memorized dictionary to get the "mot juste" It would be more of a Rain Man type of feat - such a person would probably be able to recite what word was on page 23, line 4, third word. Edited by Old Chemist on 03 October 2010 at 2:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6469 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 37 of 49 03 October 2010 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is possible to memorize a whole bilingual dictionary. It's a memory stunt some memory masters perform.
You can see Ed Cooke testing Dr Yip Swee Chooi on the 1774 page Chinese-English dictionary that he learned by heart. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDcVKtyryPw Edited by slucido on 03 October 2010 at 4:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4967 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 38 of 49 03 October 2010 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks, slucido, I didn't realize there was anything on Youtube on the subject. I know it is something that devotees of memory improvement do, on a much smaller scale, i.e. learn 100 words of Chinese, but I didn't know there was any record of knowledge of a full dictionary. I certainly accept it is possible - people have learnt far more boring things such as entire telephone directories, I understand, but it is a feat that gets my respect.
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| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5114 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 39 of 49 03 October 2010 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
This looks very much like a book test, a trick performed by many mentalists. One of the leading UK mentalists, Derren Brown, describes the effect as folllows:
But he mentioned in his partially autobiographical book "Tricks of the mind" that photo reading doesn't work. This means that he obviously used the photo reading reference only to throw the audience off the tracks. Unless the guy in the video was an autistic savant, it's more likely that he used a trick 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4967 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 40 of 49 03 October 2010 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe. I agree with you that Derren Brown is an absolutely brilliant mentalist, but some of his tricks are genuine, I think, such as being able to tell how many spots there are in a card covered with them. Or perhaps I am just gullible! The man who recently died, who was the model for Rain Man, wasn't an autistic savant, but he had no corpus callosum and truly did know a vast number of books in the manner I described, but he couldn't process the information and use it much.
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