Bruno and Verbatim Memorization of Law

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I like this question. You probably won’t be shocked when I say I think you have options.

Stuff I do (food for thought):

A few things I do to disambiguate on the “in-between” words:

  • Words and phrases have rhythms. Rhythms are old-school memory techniques that can be “felt”.
    • Paying attention to stressed/unstressed patterns is all this is. “In the determination” is Unstressed (“in”) —Unstressed (“the”) Unstressed (“de-”) —Stressed (“ter-”)
    • u—u—u—s or da—da—da—dum / "in—the—de—TER"
    • This is markedly different from “When determining” (but NOT for “For the”)
    • “When determining” Unstressed (“When”) —Unstressed (“de-”) —Stressed (“ter”)
    • u—u—s or da—da—dum / "when—de—TER"
    • In many (not all) situations this is an easy disambiguating device if the words you get confused have different syllabic patterns because if someone ever sings or hums lyrics/songs when nothing is actually playing, this is often a large part of the method we naturally use without thinking too much about it to “remember” the lyrics.
    • If the ambiguous rhythm is the same, then this method aint any help.
  • Wordplay and punnery can also be used (I do this a lot as well). This requires mainly sound-alikes. Play around with joining the in-between words together (in various ways) and utilize sound-alikes to cue scenes/images that help disambiguate: “In-the” : “Inda” : “Inta” : “n-Da” are all ways to begin framing/brainstorming for sound-alikes.
    • “In the determination” : “In-the-de” : “Inda-D” : “IndieD” : even “Entity” or “In-diddy”
    • I won’t pay any attention to any comments knocking this method, because for verbatim memorization it combines the former rhythmic method with punnery or wordplay and is, frankly, a method I use plenty to clarify and disambiguate on the in-between words—it allows me to utilize images and associations outside of the domain i’m memorizing to quickly clarify how things are supposed to sound. It may not be for all individuals, but it’s handy as hell.
  • Not getting words mixed up is all about having cues to clarify which specific words are being used. So any method that breaks down properties already possessed by words—such as rhythm, where/how the sounds are created in the mouth (eg, plosives like b and p are closely related, fricatives like “fff” and “shhh” are called fricatives for good reason, nasals like “mmm” “nnn” and “nnngggg” are related, plosives like k and g are closely related and still somewhat related to b and p although less so)—is something to explore.

You may not choose these techniques, so I’ll summarize my method for coming up with them:

  • break down the properties of the ambiguous objects (in this case, in-between words)
  • play with using cues that can clearly and quickly disambiguate on those properties.

I really like that idea. Take a look at this comment. It’s short but I specifically talk about mnemonic considerations for commonly used terminology within domain. Might inspire some ideas to play around with that’ll work for you.

I hope you find some things that work for you! I’m curious to read more as your journey progresses (if you take the time to share, which you very understandably might not).

Regards,
Beau

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