The best way to learn a language is to be a young child and just absorb it.

There are memory techniques for learning languages but, really, if you lack a child's memory ability, then I do not see how you can learn a language rapidly without...

Already knowing a similar language. Romance languages seem to be fast-to-learn for people already fluent in a Romance language. Or reading Japanese characters might come quicker to a Chinese student than to a Western student.

This is a really frustrating conclusion. When I was younger, I believed the foreign language learning lessons of the many memory books I was reading; but, having spent a lot of time just trying to learn the basics of some European languages, I see those techniques as being helpful on occasion but of limited application. It's best to be a young child; otherwise, you have a lot of work to do.

I think that, if a vocabulary word is resisting your attempt to memorise it then a memory technique is good. But language communication takes place at such speed that there is no substitute for rote learning language.

I do like the idea of gently learning the first 100 words of a language by playful memory techniques. If you think the Mandarin word for China sounds a bit like John Wayne, and that helps you to remember it then great!

I also think that, if you are given time to pause, and you have a memory technique for recalling a word which you want to employ, then a memory technique would be good then too. Especially since you might know a word when someone speaks to you but struggle to think of the word to make your own sentences (passive vocabulary).

One of the systems of images of this course is 1000 items which represent shorthand words; and another 1000 items system for another 1000 words. I made those items be useful vocabulary. It would be a good test to see if you know comon vocabulary if you run through the list and test if you know a foreign word for that vocabulary term.

But English words often have more than one meaning. Eg. 'Right' can mean 'correct' or a 'rightward direction'. When I developed the approximate 2 lists of 1000 words, I tried to display the most common different meanings next to them. I can provide a link to that more detailed work:

Word Atomic Meanings - A to E.

Word Atomic Meanings - F to J.

Word Atomic Meanings - K to O.

Word Atomic Meanings - P to T.

Word Atomic Meanings - U to Z.

(and I think these words will largely be the basis for the Scripted Sentences system outlined in another article.)

So I am sketching out the idea of using background image places to distinguish different meanings of English words. A person [from one of the '1000 word' lists] represents the English word, the action the person does represents the first two letters of the foreign word spelling; and the object receiving the action represents either 2 or 3 letters; thus giving a 5 letter prompt of the foreign word.

The colour of the object used in the action could indicate if the meaning of the word is column 1 / column 2 / column 3 / column 4 of the "Word Atomic Meanings" chart; and the action colour could also indicate if the action represents a 3 letter spelling or a 2 letter spelling.

It can be more nuanced than that. Maybe blue background places would be for French vocabulary; but Yellow background places would be for Spanish vocabulary [if I trial that idea, I would use colour 10 upwards since colours 0 to 9 can be action colours]. The background place can also be indicative of whether the word is intended as a verb or as a noun. Eg. 'New' [a verb] is different to a 'novelty' [a thing] but they could both use the 'New' person in an action story to prompt the spelling; by having a background that is used for verbs nouns or instead a background used for verbs.

Beyond that, some backgrounds could indicate a prefix. In German, 'auf' prefixes a lot of words. Maybe a place that means "prefix is 'auf' could be used to avoid wasting memorising 'auf' within the action or within the recipient of an action.

An additional visual clue could imply that the reverse of a word is the meaning to learn. Eg. Unlock rather than Lock.

I also have a plan to expand the vocabulary items into short sentences where frequent use vocabulary items are expressed in a rote learned big list of practise sentences.

My word prompts for foreign language used to be only 2 letters long (ie. the AA-ZZ system of an earlier lesson). I did wish I had a system for common 3 letter syllables too. Eg. I'd rather associate 'con' with a word which begins with 'con' than to merely associate 'CO'. (and an aspect of the Male 1000 system and Women 1000 system is that common 3 letter spellings are expressed also by the people.). See the Taxi Driver article (and other articles) for more on that.

5000 People

The 100 syllables I use in a lot of my work was partly inspired by looking at Chinese and Japanese and the syllables they use (when Romanised). I used to think that I could build a 10,000 image system where each image would represent two of those syllables together.

Then I compromised and thought that a 5000 image system would be good.

So I could, in theory, imagine a shorthand word's image (see the shorthand articles) in a scene involving the two syllable oriental word (or prefix): the 5000 system image implies how the 1000 system vocabulary word is spelled.

But the 'Scripted Sentences' article [maybe re-read this article once you have read the Scripted Sentences article] makes me realise that images in the 5000 image system can have a unique meaning; and each scripted sentence would use the word that is special to that image; then, to learn vocabulary, one would associate items with the 5000 image item; and not use either 1000 word system as the first step in learning a foreign word.

That last paragraph is probably hard to read. Basically, a common language word would have a standard person rote learned as being the visual way to express that popular word; then an imagined scene involving that image would be how the spelling of the first few letters of the foreign word are spelled; maybe a person from a 1000 system would be pictured in that scene to represent 3 letters; or the action being done could represent 2 letters [3 if the action is coloured], etc..

The names of the 5000 people involve a one of a hundered syllables followed by one of a hundred syllables. So person BABU would relate to a number made of the two digits of BA and the two digits of BU (see the various artices in this course where there are 100 syllables with matching 2 digit numbers. eg. 'People from 00 to 99'). In a story, if you imagine the person facing to the right then the person represents BABU but if the person faces to the left in the imagined story then maybe the person represents BA + 50 followed by BU. BA is 02. BU is 04; but adding 50 (and looking at person 52) would be using the syllable 'NA' rather than 'BA'; and that would be the spelling 'NABU'.

So the 5000 person system could express 10,000 four letter words - depending on whether the people face right or left in the story which they are in.

Another idea is that a language with accents can have the accents expressed by colour: the colour of the action. Maybe 2 accents in a word could be expressed by one colour in an action also. Howebver, I would prefer to represent accents by imagining an extra item in the scene - probably hovering above the main story that is going on at the scene.

Gender

There is an opportunity to store gender against the vocabulary people of a 1000 person system. There could be a list of personal items where only one of those item sshould be imagined as a posession of any one vocabulary person. Each item represents the gender. If you were only interested in learning a language that has Male/Female then there might be a choice of two items: the noun word is either male or female in nature.

However, if you have a rule that German genders (male/female/neuter) occur but also French (male/female) and also Spanish (male/female) then 3 x 2 x 2 = 12 personal items could be the choices to imagine in the posession of a 1000 list person. Since an English word like 'right' has more than one meaning, it may be necessary to assume that the gender clue applies to the foreign word that matches with the first main meaning.

Another way to express gender is to have a specific colour chosen as the background colour of imagined action stories of one particular language. That could be used as a reminder of gender when a word does not follow the language's regular pattern. Eg. If, in Spanish, nouns ending in 'a' are usually feminine but 'día' is masculine.

I made a special effort with German gender and I wrote an article about putting some German words into a linked list syory; and he alphabetical order of those words implies gender. See the 'German' artcile.

Words not in the male and woman 1000 lists and picture dictionary

If a word is not in the 1000 lists then how can you visualise it in a mnemonic story? Assuming the foreign word is capable of being drawn, you could just imagine a spelling prompt beside the object or, better still, interacting with the object. Eg. An image of a person who represents BA could be imagined beside an image of a foreign word that is spelled BA [prefix] and then the rest of the word's spelling will hopefully be recalled by you via regular rote memory..

Some words are not easy to visualise and I do not have much advice about those words; that type of word was a motivation for making the male 1000 and woman 1000 and picture dictionary word lists.

Cartoon person as a spelling reminder of a foreign word

An action in the 000-999 woman system can mean a 3 letter spelling but I picked some actions (from the 1000 actions article) to represent two letter pairs: AA, AB, AC... ZX, ZY, ZZ.

Another article explains how a cartoon person (who means a particular word meaning) can have a story imagined involving an action on a recipient of the action; and that action and who/what it is done to indicates a spelling prompt.

Now that this course has a picture dictionary being developed, it would be nice to imagine a story of a word like 'dog' where the story indicates the foreign spelling of 'dog'. A person from the AA-ZZ article could do an action to the dog; and that choice of person and choice of action would imply a spelling. Also, an image a person from history could be imagined doing an action to an object - and that would imply the spelling of the first letters of the person's name.

Cartoon people can be memorised speaking

Another way to use a person image to memorise vocabulary is to visualise the person saying a foreign word. That is not as good a prompt as the 'person action recipient' approach but it does revise the sound of the whole word - and that is what you ultimately want to be recalling. The mnemonic approach is no good for rapid listening or rapid production of sentences in a foreign language. I see it as a stepping stone towards that. It is extra mental associations with a new foreign word and a fallback position if you are trying to remember a word and it is 'on the tip of your tongue'.

Scripted Sentences

In the 'Scripted Sentences' article, I write about practice sentences for testing one's recall of vocabulary; and it could test listening ability as well.

Prefix Behaviours

By having memorised images that mean frequently used words of a language, it is possible to imagine a story involving that image and then other things that imply how to begin to spell the word.

The vocabulary word's image tends to be a person so that an action can be performed by the person on an object. The action and the recipient of the object imply how to spell the first letters of the spelling of the foreign word. The colour of the action can imply a spelling as well. Eg.Is a whip red or blue or yellow? If red means a particular letter then it is a spelling clue also.

An issue I have had is where a language has too many words beginning with a common prefix. So there is little value in remembering a prefix because the more unqiue aspect of the word occurs some letters further along the spelling of the word. Eg. In English, "Con-" is a prefix where it would be good to memorise "Con-" but also the next letters. So "Constellation", for instance, would be nice as "Con" and "ste" of CON-STE-llation.

I have some notes on behaviours which the recipient of an action can do. That behaviour could imply the prefix "Con". I think this could be handy for remembering some of the German language prefixes:

Another use of Prefix Behaviours is if I imagine them happening to the recipient of an action:

The 1000 words of the Woman 1000 article are English vocabulary but several words have more than one meaning. In a situation where it is the exact meaning that matters rather than the 'foreign word' spelling itself then the scene involving a Woman 1000 person doing an action to a recipient can be embellished with a Prefix Behaviour on the recipient of the action. So if I have enumerated the 4 different meanings of an English word then Behaviour 1 occurring in the imagined scene can imply that the intended meaning of the Woman 1000 word is meaning 1. And if Behaviour 2 happens then Behaviour 2 is implied.

Lingering Language Method

I have a strategy for learning a language as a hobby. I call it 'Lingering Language Method' and I wrote an article about it.