Hello there!

Native English speakers have a vocabulary of 20,000 to 35,000 words. In daily language, we use somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000.

That's a lot of words.

In our first language, we get the privilege of many, many years of immersion and support. We gradually acquire most of the words of our language while growing up. It feels effortless.

It's nice to imagine that a second language should feel the same, but it's not practical to approach learning a second language this way. We just don't have that kind of time.

Remembering better

In a second language we need better strategies for remembering things.

In a previous issue of Ling-oh! I talked about active recall + spaced repetition. Combined together, these approaches help us keep stuff in our brain much longer by repeatedly activating it so it can't be forgotten.

While repetition is key, it turns out that organisation of our memory is just as important. Get both right and you suddenly have a new superpower: a significantly better strategy to remember things.

The key to better organisation of memory is to not simply remember things, but to create links to existing things. The more links, the easier it'll be to find a path in your brain back to that information next time you need it.

Let's talk about mnemonics

Why do we so effortlessly remember that Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain, but find it harder to remember the ordered colours of the rainbow?

For the exact same reason that I'll never forget that "salmon" in German is "der Lachs".

Let me explain.

Salmon are very summer-loving fish. Where do you think they get their pinkish hue from? When the sun's out, salmon just love to waddle over to the beach. The sand brushing between their fish toes, they hurry to find the nearest sun lounger. Salmon want to do only one thing. They want to lie back, and re-LACHS. They love nothing more than re-LACHS-ing.

Compare the story above with the following:

The word for "salmon" in German is "der Lachs".

Which do you think is going to leave your memory faster?

These are called mnemonics, or memory devices. The idea is simple. Take the thing you want to remember and add extra information to it. The more ways you entangle and connect the new thing to what you already know, the better. Make it fun and interesting and it's even more effective.

The "salmon" mnemonic above isn't just an example. I heard it over 10 years ago and it's now impossible for me to forget it.

Mnemonic variations

There are different variations when it comes to creating mnemonics.

Story method

Humans are really good at understanding and remembering stories. This method uses that fact to invent a story and place the information you want to remember at the center. The stranger the story, the easier it'll be for you to find it again in your brain.

Memory palaces

A memory palace uses a physical location such as your house, a street or some other geographic location. You mentally "walk" through the location and commit an item to each area. Again, the stranger you make it, the more memorable it is. Later you simply walk through your memory palace to remember the items that you left there. Memory palaces are a popular method used even by memory contest champions.

Rhymes/Songs

"I before E except after C"

"Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred and ninety-two"

Whichever you choose to use, the most important thing is to make the new information stand out, and the mnemonic itself as memorable as possible.

Next time you're trying to remember something, stop and invent a wacky and weird story about it. Make sure the new information that you want to remember stands out in your story. As you build the story, try to visualise and feel it.

And just like that your new information will be like a salmon, wandering over to the beach on a sunny day, with the only going of re-Lachs-ing.