I am an American English speaker learning a ben system (not for competition) just as a tool for memorizing phone numbers, pass words, etc. But I have some trouble distinguishing between the (2) short “e” as in elephant and the 3) short “i” as in mitten.
I thought I might replace or maybe add to these to give greater flexibility. Maybe (2) “e” as in elephant or “uh” as in put. Maybe (3) ‘i’ as in mitten or “oi” as in boy?
Does anyone have any advice or suggestions for handling this.
I am also American, but I don’t have any trouble with those sounds. For me, the only trouble I have with the Ben system is distinguishing sounds that end in “r” like *54, *34, *24, *14, etc. I usually resort to either using French words where the “r” is much more separated from the vowel, or just practicing the mnemonic enough that I know which word it’s supposed to be. That being said, I mainly use the Ben system for long term storage for the efficiency and I am not very good at coming up with them on the fly unless it is a very easy case, so this problem might just not come up that much for me.
You don’t have to use the Ben system exactly as is, in fact it seems most people that use it develop their own version. The original works fine for me, but if you want to add in or change sounds, go for it! You should experiment and see what works for you.
That was difficult for me too, so I added “th” as an option for numbers that end in 4.
Example: 334 would be “MITHril shirt” in my system. (My assignments are different than in the original Ben System so that’s actually the image for 364 for me.)