Do you need a memory palace for unordered information?

General Memory Chat
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Originally this question arose when I was memorizing words. If you study several new languages at once, it is probably going to be hard to remember which words belong to which language. It’s much easier to assign each language their own set of memory palaces.

Similarly, you could branch your memory palaces, so some contain only verbs, some only nouns etc.

The question is, is this approach useful otherwise? For example, you need to learn 100 new words from whatever language. You just need to be able to map each word to its meaning, nothing more. Would it still make sense to use a memory palace for this, or is it enough to just form 100 Links in your mind, without attaching them anywhere particular?

It’s not just about language learning, key to value maps are in general a very common memorization problem.

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The advantage of an ordered memory palace is for review: you follow the path and you know if you “got everything”.

But if you delegate the scheduling of your reviews to another system (for example Anki) then a dispersed memory palace is fine.

It’s useful to know that “Tisch” is in the zone for masculine nouns because it gives you important information (grammatical gender), but it doesn’t matter which words are around it.

That being said, for vocabulary, simple mnemonics with spaced repetition also works well.

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Well, as someone with experience memorizing phrases and words, this is one of the best methods for languages, especially since you can create vast memory palaces using online audiovisual resources.

I’ve memorized movie dialogues, and this is what I recommend most, as you adapt to the language more realistically. You can repeat phrases and memorize them with your memory palace and practice repeating phrases as much as possible.

When a word is repeated in some phrases, I usually use the same image. Since having more than one image for the variety of words prevents interference problems, you can put one phrase on each wall, or even more than one phrase, but as I said, there are so many online resources that this is the least of your worries.

This way, I memorize all kinds of study material without worrying about whether or not I have enough space.

The only problem is that there are too many methods for this task, and honestly, explaining them would be too much for me right now. But with the substitute word method, for example, I can memorize up to three words with just one image. With Pietro’s, Bruno’s, or Fludd’s methods (of these three, I can only recommend Pietro, since Fludd’s and Bruno’s methods are a bit more complicated and require practice, so Pietro’s technique and the substitute word method would be the best resources, combined with the Palacio method), I memorize letter by letter. I used the latter with phrases from a German news article, so I can also spell it correctly, at least what I memorized. I only tried the method with German; I didn’t memorize too much, but it didn’t take me long, actually. It was quite fast. And for English, I have a project to memorize words, which I had abandoned because of other projects I have coming up, but I hope I can find the time next month.

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While a MP is very good to remember things in order, that’s not the reason why it’s used.

The point of the MP is that the spatial aspect of it makes it easier to make the link memorable, so even if you don’t care about the order it is easier to store your images in it.

It’s also easier for repetition. If you have learnt 300 words without storing them anywhere you’ll likely forget which 300 words you learnt, so you won’t repeat them and you’ll eventually forget them. If you store them in a MP you don’t need to remember what words you learnt, you only need to check it in your MP.

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Err… what does that word mean?

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Table (in German)

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I’m not sure what “unordered information” means. Unless I’m missing something… the arrow of time imposes an order one way or the other.

Generally, the solution to escaping the linearity of the Memory Palace technique itself for random access recall is to use the approach as a spaced repetition device.

There’s no need to “store” anything in Memory Palaces when you use the technique in this way. Certainly, you can often revisit the information in a Memory Palace similar to the way you can look at it again in a book.

By why would you want to when the point of learning techniques is to just know and access the information?

This is the missing step many people miss: Use the Memory Palace technique for review so that you establish long-term retention quickly.

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My English is not good. But what I understand is that wants to know if MP works to remember series of words in several languages. Without no relation between them or is better remember individually.

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I think it depends on what you’re trying to remember. If the information doesn’t have to be recalled in a fixed order, I usually focus on making each association as distinctive as possible rather than assigning everything to a memory palace. Once the amount of information starts growing, though, having separate locations makes reviewing much more organized and helps avoid confusion.