[tayl0r]

I'm having trouble figuring out what kinds of "vivid images" you would use for memorizing foreign language vocabulary words.

For example, I'm trying to learn German right now. It seems obvious that you would use images of the English translation in your memory palace, but then you would just have the problem of remembering the German word that each image signifies.

Or going the other way, from German to English, what images would you use in your memory palace to represent German words? How would you tie them back to English?

help?

[dsrguru]

Figuring out how to encode various classes of data into images is one of the more challenging aspects of the method of loci. Also, memorizing an associative array of data is less natural in the method of loci than memorizing ordered data since the way you recall the data is by tracing your steps through the memory palace in your mind. I guess you could place two images at each location, functioning sort of like a LISP alist (list of pairs where the first element in each pair represents a key and the second a value), but that still doesn't answer your question about how to create the images. Maybe go syllable by syllable? For example, if you wanted to remember that kochen is kitchen, you could visualize a macaw perched on the shoulder of Barbie's boyfriend while the latter flipped burgers on a toy grill. The "caw" sound in my dialect of English is identical to the "ko" in kochen, and Barbie's boyfriend Ken would be enough to trigger my memory of "-chen", so I'd be like "Right! This was illustrating that the German word kochen means to cook."

Spaced repetition lends itself a lot more naturally to memorizing foreign language vocabulary words than the method of loci, so you might want to use that approach instead. Within spaced repetition, you can also use vivid images as a sort of scaffolding to increase the odds you'll remember the word before the next review, and you can eventually let that image go once you start recalling it easily. The more connections you form to other thoughts, the more firmly a fact will be anchored in your mind, so you might as well use mental images if you can come up withthem, even in spaced repetition. James Heisig uses visual mnemonics to teach several thousand Chinese characters in Remembering the Kanji[1] (Chinese characters for use in Japanese) and Remembering the Hanzi[2] (Chinese characters for use in Chinese), and communities like AJATT[3] and Reviewing the Kanji[4] advocate combining Heisig's approach with spaced repetition.

[1] http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Rem...

[2] http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Rem...

[3] http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com

[4] http://kanji.koohii.com/

[tayl0r]

Thanks. So I was understanding it correctly then, it is difficult to use this type of memory method with foreign languages.

I will stick with spaced repetition =)

[drbawb]

I'm wondering if it might be easier for a language like Chinese or Japanese, perhaps, where the symbols and words are a bit more visually distinct.

That being said: doesn't Rosetta Stone use a technique that basically relates pictures to common words? I've never tried that program, and only looked at demos briefly, but I've heard great things about it.