From the course: Improving Your Memory

How to memorize words in foreign languages

From the course: Improving Your Memory

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How to memorize words in foreign languages

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- The similar sound technique was discussed earlier in this course. But in that lesson, we discussed how the technique can be applied to technical terms you may encounter in English. But we can also use this technique for foreign languages. The same idea applies, if you had a word in a foreign language that you were trying to memorize, you have to search for a sound in that word that sounds like something in English. When you find a familiar sound, try to link it to an image, something you can picture in your mind, and then try to link that visual to the meaning of the word in a way that is exaggerated. This technique takes advantage of the fact that humans are very good at remembering visual information and things that are out of the ordinary. Let's take the Spanish word barco as an example. Barco means boat in Spanish. So again, we're looking for a similar sound within this word. The first thing I notice is the sound bark, which sounds like the sound a dog would make when it's barking. So you might imagine a dog on a boat barking the letter O out of its mouth. Or you may have linked the sound bark to something else, maybe the bark of a tree. You might imagine a large stump of a tree being carried out to sea by a boat. Later, if you saw the word barco, you would immediately remember these images that you imagined. Keep in mind that repetition is still important, so be sure to rehearse this visual multiple times in your head. Let's take another foreign language word, but let's try the Italian word capello, which means hat. Now clearly, there is the sound cap in that word, which is a synonym for hat. But this word also sounds like JELL-O, well, it rhymes with JELL-O. So you might imagine a person wearing a hat made out of JELL-O, or maybe you imagine someone played a prank on you and put JELL-O in your hat. What would it feel like if you put the hat on your head? Imagine the JELL-O getting in your hair and all of that craziness. So if you end up seeing the word capello later on, you'll hopefully remember one of these images. We could go over countless examples like this, but the idea would still be the same. You need to look for a similar sound in the word, link that sound to something you can visualize, and then try to associate that image with the meaning in some sort of exaggerated or silly way. Rehearse it a few times, and I think you'll find this method to be very effective in memorizing the meanings of words in different languages.

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