I am trying to learn a lot of Polish vocabulary. I am finding it difficult to learn in a traditional way; because the spelling is so different from the spelling patterns of English words. Despite that, I have learned quite a lot of words now; but some words are very stubborn and I can not even remember the first letter of some foreign words. I have developed a technique to help me with that problem.
I have made 5 types of sentence; and each sentence structure tells me something about the first letter of a foreign word. The Polish word for pool is 'basen'. The Polish word for 'keyboard' is 'keyboard'. The Polish word for perfume is 'perfumy'. Look at the following sentences and I will explain how they help to remember the first letter of the Polish for 'pool'; and how to remember situations where a foreign word is basically the same as the English word.
"The pool is big."
"The pool is not quiet."
"The perfume seems to be yellow."
"The perfume does not seem to be toxic."
"The keyboard is definitely a keyboard."
If I can memorise the line "The pool is big" then I am really learning that the 'B' of "Big" is the first letter of the foreign word for 'pool': 'basen'. So the word after "is" is actually a spelling prompt.
If I can memorise the line "The pool is not quiet" in order to recall that the Polish word for 'pool' does not begin with a 'Q' [the Q of 'Quiet']. That does not sound very helpful until you revisit the '0 to 9' article where I state that some letters belong in a family together. I stated [for the digit 0] that B, O and Q belong in a set together. "The pool is not quiet" implies that 'pool' begins with an 'O' or with a 'B' [since the Q is not permitted].
If I can memorise the line "The perfume seems to be yellow" then the 'seems to be' implies that the foreign word for perfume is almost identical to the English word except wherea 'Y' occurs: perfumy.
If I can memorise the line "The perfume does not seems to be toxic" then I am memorising that the foreign word for perfume is largely like the English word except at the point where a non-T letter occurs. In the '0-9' article, T and Y occur in the same family [at digit 8] and so a non-T is actually the letter 'Y': 'perfumy'.
I could even translate these sentence into Polish as an additional exercise; in that way, words like 'big' and'quiet' and 'yellow' and 'toxic' could be practised as well.
A keyboard is 'keyboard' in Polish. In order to note that, I can use the sentence: "The keyboard is definitely a keyboard."
If a word looks like an English word but means something different then I can use the phrase "... is not wanted.".
Eg. A 'blanket' is not a blanket. The Polish word gives the false impression that it is the same as a blanket but it means something else. So I can say:
"The blanket is not wanted."
And that reminds me that it is a special case.