Hi guys! I’m currently trying to learn Brazilian Portuguese. I am a native English speaker. My technique so far has been pretty simple I’ll take a word and depending on how it sounds I’ll create an image that includes the meaning and the pronunciation and then insert it into a loci.
My problems currently are the fact that I have to assign both the pronunciation and the meaning to just one image so if I forget a part of it I forget the whole thing. Moreover, It takes up a ton of space because of the fact that each image is only one word meaning that I need a lot of loci. I considered making a type of PAO system for each letter and then using that to create and image but I found that had it’s own problems as well.
I’m looking for other methods or ways to condense it so it doesn’t take up as much space and there’s less of a chance of me forgetting it. Are there other methods in place that work faster or better?
there are lots of posts on here about languages. look up posts by kinma, as one example, as there is a lot of very useful information in those posts and kinma has learnt quite a few languages. i dont think kinma advocates using MPs, only if the words are very hard to remember.
its completely inappropriate for me to give you advice on learning languages as my opinions are completely untested and untried apart from some fun experiments to cram words to see how many i can learn. although if you want my opinions on how i would go about it if i was learning a language i could tell you
I’ve shared my thoughts on this extensively on other posts on this forum: for learning languages don’t use loci but use flashcards (SRS like Anki if you like).
Brief reason why: communicating in a language requires immediate recall, and memory palaces don’t provide fast recall. So at best, memory palaces are a cumbersome way to eventually learn the associations that flashcards/SRS/Anki is optimized to do.
Use ad hoc mnemonics for random words that don’t stick. And try to use the words you learn in context to build real connections between vocabulary and context, which also directly helps with fluency.
[Source: I use memory palaces for other purposes, and I learned Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish, successfully by myself as an adult.]
