Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0339: Memorize the international phonetic alphabet

Episode Date: June 25, 2015

Daniel asks about memorizing the international phonetic alphabet. I describe how I would tackle this project, using mnemonics based on the ways that the characters look. 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.

Master of Memory 339. 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. Daniel asked about learning the International Phonetic Alphabet. So Daniel, this is a really interesting project, and I've been looking things up about this alphabet. It's something that I've been wanting to learn for quite a while.

And just first, right off the bat, I'd really like to collaborate with you on this if you're up to it. Just shoot me an email, respond to the email that we sent you about having your question featured today, and I'll be happy to do this with you. So I'm actually mostly thinking out loud for this episode because I have this chart right in front of me and I'm thinking about how I would do it. So, basically what we have is a chart that has two dimensions. You have the place in the mouth and you have the manner of execution. The places are organized into four general areas, labial, coronal, dorsal, and laryngeal. And then the manner of execution includes nasal, plosive, fricative, approximant, trill, flap or tap,

lateral fricative, lateral approximant, and lateral flap. This may all sound like Chinese, but just as an example, a labial area, I mean, the labial area is just the lips. And so a nasal labial would be the M sound. And then a coronal nasal sound would be the N sound because it's that placement in the mouth. And then a dorsal one would be kind of in the back of the mouth. And then there is no laryngeal one. And then plosive is when you have a burst of air behind the sound so labial is you know the plosive for labial is p or b and a plosive for coronal is t or d and then just as an example of another one fricative for labial is or no for labial dental specifically is f or v. So you can see how these,

you just kind of have to associate these manners with the way that the sound is executed, and then the places with where in the mouth things are being placed. Now the places are further subdivided into two or three different areas, and so what we have to do is we have to decide how to organize our palace to place all these things, what images we're going to use to associate them with the way that these letters look and the sound that they make. So what I would do is I would just start by organizing your palace based on the places in the right. So based on the places in the mouth. So you'll have four large areas and we'll have, you know, two to four areas inside each of those because coronal has four, labial has two,

dorsal has three, and laryngeal has two. So you'll want to have that many stations in your palace. Then going from top to bottom, we'll change the execution based on the letter. So nasal, plosive, fricative, etc. Going from top to bottom in those particular stations. The next step that I would suggest is just to go ahead and place all the letters that look exactly how they sound, like t, d, m, p, b, f, and all of those. Put them in their correct places and just place them there with an image that represents exactly what they should be. So like you'll have a feather for f, you'll just place that in its own place. And then for m, you'll just put, you know, a mouse or something like that. Just something that starts with that sound. Then go right from there to the

most difficult sounds. And what you're going to do is you're going to want to find a word that kind of has that sound in it. Like perhaps you have trouble with the zh sound. That's going to be in a coronal station, but with a fricative execution. So that'll be, it'll correspond to other stations that have a fricative execution that you do know, things like f and v, but it's in a different room and has to be represented in a different way. And the interesting thing is the shape of this letter is kind of pointed at the top and then round at the bottom, a lot like a letter three. So we're going to have to find some imagery that corresponds to the letter three, but that has the sound in it.

So what you might do is just find, if you can't think of a good word for that, you might use somebody that you know, somebody that you can really visualize and either know personally or is famous, but has a name that starts with the or that includes the sound in it very prominently. Then put that person in that location, right there where they belong, and associate them very strongly with the number three. And that way you've effectively stored the way the letter looks, it looks like the letter three,

the sound that it makes from this person's name, the prominent zh, and also the placement, the way that it's organized, so that you can name exactly why it sounds that way and associate it with all the other fricative sounds and all the other coronal sounds at the same time. These are just some initial thoughts because I haven't worked on this yet, but I'd, again, really like to collaborate with you on this, Daniel, if you have any interest in collaborating with me on this, and I'd really like to learn it. And for anyone else who's listening, I'd be happy

to collaborate with you on a learning project as well. Just leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.