Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0497: Learn German: A new language memory palace

Episode Date: February 2, 2016

Jim asks about learning German using the same memory palace techniques that we presented in the Accelerated Spanish course. I give some of the beginning steps to creating a memory palace that will work for learning German. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by […]

Master of Memory 497. 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. Jim submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Jim says, My wife and I are planning a trip down the Danube. My German is incredibly rusty. I recall difficulties with gender, three of them. How would Joel become a German character and help me store some basic Deutsch vocabulary in the next nine months.

So since you have nine months, Jim, I would actually recommend building up your German vocabulary from scratch with a new memory palace and really start with the top, let's say, 100 to 150 words and mastering them. It's been shown more and more recently, and it's definitely been shown with the success of Accelerated Spanish, that learning a language is not about learning lots of vocabulary, but it's about making extremely effective use of the most important vocabulary and mastering that first. And you are reflecting that and you're speaking of the cases and things

like that. Those are all represented by the most common vocabulary, and so I would start with that and get really comfortable with them using a memory palace technique that sorts things by function. Now what I've done in this episode is I've basically created a palace like I did five episodes ago for French, although in this one the whole structure of the pronoun palace is quite different from that of Romance languages. It's so different from the palaces that I created for Spanish and French. I actually started building this and had to redo it completely. And what you're going to end up with is basically equivalent to breaking out the grammar lists and studying them, but it's not nearly as tedious or boring.

So obviously you do want to learn those genders and cases and plurals, but you want to make it interesting and you want to make it relevant to your conversation, not just some lists that you study and memorize and forget. So if you've listened to episode 492 and to previous things that I've posted and written and spoken on the podcast about how to do a language memory palace, you'll know that to learn these words as I describe them, you're going to use memory palace images instead of just trying to remember lists. You're going to turn the words that I mention into images so that, for example, with the first word und, which means and, I mean, that's easy enough to images, you know, so that, for example, with the first word und, which means and,

I mean, that's easy enough to remember, but you do want to store it in the conjunction palace and the relative pronouns palace, because what you're wanting is for these things that connect two clauses to be exchangeable with one another. And so you need to store und somehow with some sort of image. And then und will go along with das, because that as a relative pronoun also can be followed by an independent clause. So they're exchangeable in certain situations. So you want to store both und and das in the same scene in your memory palace. Then you'll want also another scene for prepositions. And your different prepositions are going to include ZU,

however that's pronounced. And that meaning and the meaning of all prepositions is completely contextual. It's so specific to the German language, but it means things like to, with, and at. And the way that you create the image for the zoo word should reflect this. Maybe it has something to do with a zebra or something that you associate with a zoo in English, but you have to represent to, with, and at somehow in this place in the memory palace. And then in a very nearby location to represent that it's exchangeable grammatically, you want in, which basically is like the, you know, it's I-N and

it's like the English words in and into, but also kind of like pertaining to. So obviously you'll want your imagery to reflect that. And then of course we have mit, which means with or using in some situations. So those are the three most common prepositions, and you want to store those in a preposition palace that you'll start to build out. But first, just really learn all of the uses of those specific prepositions and get used to interchanging them to remember that they are prepositions. Now we start to get into some of the things that you're talking about more. For example, the singular articles. So this is how I've structured the palace. We have a palace for singular articles and another palace location or scene for plural articles. Now I've only listed the most common articles. There actually will be more, and you'll want more palaces for these,

as I'll show with the pronouns when I get into those. But we'll start with just the articles, and you'll build just these two scenes, the basic singular and plural scenes, and then you'll build more later after you've mastered these. So first of all, you want to have a system to remember that D is the feminine singular. I would place that on the left. Das is the neuter singular.

I would place that in the middle or maybe high up. Let's say you're in a room. You have things on the left side, on the right side, and in the middle or on the ceiling. And that middle represents the neutral. You want the locations to be very distinct. So there's no question about whether it's feminine, masculine, or neuter. Now, in the same place that you store das, I would also store ein. So you'll know that das is the, and ein is a or an. But you have them both in the neuter location. And then on the right side of your room, you're going to store der and ein. So that's the masculine the and the masculine a. Now in another palace to

represent the plurals, you'll have three different locations, one for masculine, one for feminine, and one for neuter. But all three of them will just be three different instances of d. And the reason for that is just to make sure it's very clear that these are you know if you ever need a masculine plural you know that it's D because you see it in the masculine location next let's go to the subject pronouns so we'll have one palace scene for singular subject pronouns and ich will be in one location for I you you know, the first person. Du will be across from you, let's say, you know, on the opposite side of the room, if you're using rooms, for you, and that's

the singular informal. And then it's also, you know, both masculine and feminine, so it doesn't go on the right or the left, it's just straight across from you, just like you're in the middle yourself, although you're not neuter. And then es is it, and z is basically she. And so those are our subject pronouns, and the es will be in the middle, and the z will be on the left. We don't have the word for he here yet, because it's actually not as high on the frequency list, and we're trying to start with as few words as possible just to establish our palace. The next location is our subject pronouns for the plural. So we'll have wir for we, so the w-i-r, and that'll be once again where the ich was in the first place. It's on your side of the room, the side that you see the room from. Then you have sie, which is they,

and so that could be on the right or left with an image for sie. And then sie will also be in another location, which is across from you. So once again, we're placing the same word in multiple locations to represent that it means multiple things. It's essentially different words. It means both they and the plural version of you. Next, we'll go to another scene with the dative pronouns. So mir means me or to me. And that's the only word that's going in this scene for now, but you'll know how to structure that scene once you start adding other words to it with the dative version of you across from you, and so on.

Then there will also be palaces for accusative, possessive, and possibly genitive, and that makes a total of eight or ten different palaces for the pronouns. Then we'll go for demonstrative pronouns, which are different from those personal pronouns. So you'll have a separate scene for das, which is this or that, and that'll be the only word in that scene for now. And then starting to build an adverb palace, you'll start with nicht, which means not in most situations. So it's most of the use of not, and that's nicht. And that'll be the primary word in your adverb palace.

And then you'll also start to build a palace for sein, which is the to be verb. And the only thing in there is ist. But you'll know how to structure that palace if you kind of look up, you know, compare the way that German verbs are conjugated with the way that we've structured our Spanish palaces at Spanishin1month.com. And that'll give you an idea of how to structure this German palace. I know I've only given you one verb in that palace, but, you know, you'll know how to structure it as you go along. So I would start with just making this palace really simple and really solid. So choose your locations and make sure you have really strong images for all of these words in these locations. And then build it from there once you've started to get used to the uses of these words.

And then the beautiful thing is that you can interchange these words grammatically and you don't have to memorize lists. Instead, you're thinking of scenes and using words interchangeably that way. Now everyone who's listening and interested in this remember that Tuesdays or episodes ending with two or seven are reserved for language learning. So in our next episode on language learning we could go deeper into German or French maybe with specific mnemonics or with more words, or we could start some work on another language. It's up to you. Just leave me a question at masterofmemory.com slash question.

For our next episode, we're scheduled to work on memorizing passages, and that episode is going to be memorizing a poem of Oscar Wilde. What do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon.