Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0317: Reprise: How can I learn Spanish verb conjugations?

Episode Date: May 26, 2015

Today Timothy revisits the question on how to learn Spanish verb conjugations, with some extra comments on how he would change his answer today. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Today we're doing a reprise episode of episode 52 about Spanish verb conjugations. The system that's described in this episode is a good solid system that since then has worked for hundreds of students. It's what we teach at Accelerated Spanish. So basically what you're doing is you're using a building with locations in the building for tenses and moods and characters in those places for persons. Now one thing I would change is I would put more emphasis on creating something visual for these mnemonics rather than using stories as I described them in the episode

because things that are visual and that you can see in one snapshot are a little easier to store. Also, I would add that after learning all the important irregular verbs this way in Spanish, other verbs, the less common verbs, are actually going to fall into patterns using N for the pandas, S for the store owner, etc. And you won't have to do this whole process for every single verb. So don't get daunted by the fact that you have to have several images for one verb. Now something I didn't go into in this episode, and I can't really go into in detail right now, is the different tenses and moods and the nuances of those in the Spanish language.

But all of our Spanish materials are free at masterofmemory.com slash Spanish, so you can look up more information there. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Ashley asked on Facebook about learning verb conjugations in Spanish. So for me, the basic principle of learning vocabulary in any language is to take the stressed syllable of the word,

turn that into a word in your own language, and then create a funny story that you'll remember that relates it to the meaning of the word in the other language. It also helps to place these stories in actual locations, whether in a real building that you've been in or a real landscape that you've been in or a fictional place that you're familiar with. If you categorize based on those locations, then all you have to do to think of a particular word or a particular meaning is to find that place and look and see what's in there in your imagination. For verb conjugations, my primary suggestion is to create a different building for every single verb that you learn, whether it's a real building or a building that you make up.

But it could be an imaginary building. You just want it to be really solid, so sometimes it helps to have a real building. But the whole theme of the building will be that verb or its infinitive. So let's say that you wanted to come up with mnemonics for the verb estar. So you would make the building estar and you'd theme it after that word. So let's take the stress syllable star and maybe we'll come up with an astronomy themed shop like a magic shop with lots of stars and everything around it. So even though a star is the verb to be in reference to location or condition, we can theme all of our mnemonics related to this word around this idea of a magic shop with stars. Now to categorize based on location, we're actually going to place different tenses in each location in the building. And then to categorize further, of course, we'll have to

have different mnemonics for the first person, the third person, the third person plural, the second person, and the first person plural. So what I'll do is I'll imagine that there's a bee that represents the first person, and then a lizard, his friend, represents the third person. So any story related to the lizard you'll know is a third person verb. Then he has a couple of friends that are stuffed pandas, and they represent the third person plural. And then the second person is the owner of the shop, and of course the first person plural is the bee and all his friends. Starting from that premise, we can base all of our mnemonics on the stressed syllables of the words that we are learning, the conjugations that we're learning, and you'll find that these conjugations,

even though the beginnings of the words are all very similar, the conjugations are going to have different stressed syllables based on where you are in the shop. So for example, in the entrance, when these people first walk in, we'll use the present tense. And so we'll have a story about the bee, who represents the first person, carrying a toy star. And so he says, estoy. Estoy means I am in the first person in a specific location. Or está, that's the second person. So we would imagine that the lizard, maybe he's wearing sunglasses and he's pretending that he's a star. So está. And then estás is the second person. So the owner of the store is maybe tossing some magic wands around.

And so you think estás. And so that's the second person in the present tense. And then están means maybe the pandas are standing on the lizard's tail. So estan, they estan on his tail. And so on. So you have a different, interesting, memorable story for each different person in the present tense. And you think of that location, and you think of that person, and you can ideally immediately recall what the correct conjugation of the verb is. So if you want to say, I am here, correct conjugation of the verb is. So if you want to say, I am here, you just think of the B going into the store with a toy,

and you think, estoy aquí. Next, you'll have to do similar things for different locations in the shop, and those would represent different tenses. For example, it's a store, so there would be a merchandise area, and all of the preterite tenses will be placed in the merchandise area. So we might use the stress syllable stew to represent some beef stew. For some reason, this magician or this person who owns this magic shop has beef stew in the merchandise area. And the main character, the bee, gets his face in the stew, and so he says estuve, and the lizard gets his foot in the stew, and so he says estuvo. That distinguishes between estuve and estuvo,

but in both cases, the stressed syllable is stew, so you can remember that stew represents the preterite tense. And then behind the counter, all of the imperfect tenses are represented by the stressed syllable stab, S-T-A-B, as in maybe the owner is suspected of wanting to stab them with a magic wand. So all the stories related to the imperfect tense have the stressed syllable stab. Then you could place future tenses in the front of the shop and then other tenses behind the shop and so on. So you're just creating different places for different tenses and then you think of whatever person is in that place to think of the particular word that you'll need for that conjugation for that person.

All right, I hope you've enjoyed this reprise episode. For anyone who has any questions about learning or memorizing anything faster than ever, feel free still to leave a message at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll be able to respond quickly to your message from wherever I am. I just won't be able to record an episode on that topic until I'm back in the States in May. Meanwhile, if you want to support the show, please check out our Spanish course at masterofmemory.com slash Spanish. Or if you want to follow my adventures in Argentina or wherever else I might happen to be, you can do that at timothymoser.com. Thank you.