From "Yksi" to "Kymmenen"

Hei, nimeni on Enarbea. Hi, my name is Enarbea.

I'm a 22 year old amateur artist with a passion for learning new things. The only problem is - I don't really have much to show for it.

For the past 4 years, I've been struggling with memorizing words and phrases in the Finnish language, which has greatly affected my motivation and desire to study it. My friends and family have been very supportive while I've fought to retain the knowledge of even simple words with common memorization techniques.

None of it seemed to work for me. Like it was back in highschool, I could remember "silly" things like the plots and characters of certain movies, books and video games, but I was somehow unable to recall how to tell my best friend (who is Finnish herself) "good night" in her native language without using a translator - making me feel like a phony every time I did so.

Then, last week, I got an ad on Instagram for a $7 course on memorization from memorize.academy. Out of curiosity, I decided to buy it and check it out. Now I'm not advertising for this course or company. I think it's a good start for learning and understanding many of the myths and misconceptions regarding our memories, and it does a good job of explaining what the visual memorization techniques are, but it's all part of a sales pitch. If you want to learn any of the techniques mentioned in the course, you have to purchase another course worth a little less than $200. I'm not saying that Kyle Buchanan (the creator of Memorize Academy) shouldn't get some form of compensation for his hard work of sharing his knowledge in simple and easy-to-understand videos, and approx. $200 is definitely more affordable than hiring a private memory coach. Additionally, many people might need the extra help that this course claims to provide. Unfortunately, I don't have the means to drop even that small of an amount of money. I work a minimum wage job and I'm still figuring out how to budget my money properly. Therefore, I had to look elsewhere...

I decided to google the methods that Buchanan mentioned in his lessons and that led me to another website: memorizeeverything.com. That's how I managed to develop a greater understanding of the use of substitution in memorization.

"The simple trick to memorize names and unfamiliar words is to substitute familiar words that can be visualized in the place of words that cannot be pictured"

Which brings us back to the subject of learning Finnish. How can substitution help with learning a foreign language??

The answer is simple. I'm going to try and tell stories to help me remember the words and phrases I need to know to communicate effectively.

I started with an experiment. I've always struggled with learning numbers - after all, they're words applied to abstract concepts. So I decided to substitute the words for the numbers 1-10 in Finnish in the hopes that I might be able to learn how to recall the numbers quickly. This was my result:

1. Yksi, pronounced "ook-see". Immediately, I started struggling, finding it very difficult to come up with a word in English that sounded like "yksi". Then I had an idea to try using a couple of words that sounded similar to "yksi", but weren't exactly the same. So "yksi" became "book C" and the story I started to tell myself began with:

A man is walking down the street carrying a book with the letter C printed on the cover.

2. Kaksi, pronounced "cock-see". This one was a little bit easier to imagine, as my brain immediately came up with an image of a rooster; aka- a "cock". But a rooster isn't memorable enough, so I put him in a business suit and gave him a cell phone. This helps because you're often more likely to remember something silly than something normal.

He passes a rooster, wearing a business suit and clucking on the phone to someone.

3. The Finnish word for the number three is "kolme", which is pronounced like "coal-meh". Keeping up with the silly story, I envisioned a "cool maid", like a housemaid, but wearing a black leather jacket over her uniform and sunglasses.

4. Four is "neljä", which sounds a lot like "nail". Therefore, it's easy to visualize the "cool maid" hammering nails.

The rooster passes a cool-looking maid in a leather jacket and sunglasses, hammering nails into a plank of wood.

5. "Viisi" (pronounced "V-see") is the Finnish word for the number five, and the only word I could think of in English that sounded similar was "visit", so I immediately googled "visit finland poster" and found one for one of the times Finland hosted the Olympics. I don't know if there's a copyright on that image or not, so I won't be including that here. Besides, I only based my mental image off of the poster, so it's not an exact reproduction.

6. Six is "kuusi", pronounced "coo-see", which sounds a lot like "cozy". Therefore, I decided that the poster would depict a woman in a cozy red sweater, sitting at a table.

7. Seven, or "seitsemän" sounds a lot like "sexy man", so obviously, I had to make the woman in the cozy red sweater have a magazine titled "Sexy Men".

On the wall behind her, there's a poster that reads "Visit Finland". On the poster is a woman in a cozy-looking red sweater sitting at a table. From the table, she picks up a magazine titled "Sexy Men" and begins to read.

8. Eight, in Finnish, is "kahdeksan", which sounds a lot like "card deck sun". Therefore, it's easy to remember a card deck with a sun depicted on it.

9. "Yhdeksän" is pronounced like "ooh deck sun", but I don't want to confuse myself by using another card deck. Instead, I imagined a duck and his son (get it? "duck's son") out taking a walk.

10. For "kymmenen", I broke it down into "cool man nun". So the duck's son takes the sun card deck and plays a game with a nun.

Across from her, there is a deck of cards. The wind blows, flipping a card that happens to have a sun depicted on it. A duck and his son are out taking a walk when the duck's son decides to pick up the deck of cards and sits down to play a game with a nun. The nun loses the game of cards, but because she's a good sport, she looks at the duck's son and says "It's cool, man"

With this memorization technique, I've realized that I can recall the numbers 1-10 far more easily in Finnish than I could by repeating them over and over again, or trying to remember to use them while I was making coffee (fun fact: the Finnish word I can remember without any difficulty is "kahvi", or "coffee"). Now I am aware that the Suomi (the Finnish people) use shortened versions of many of their words, including numbers, however I believe that one should be able to recall the full word before trying to learn the shortened version, even if it does make one sound a bit long-winded.

Another thing you might have noticed is that while this technique is good for recalling the order words come in as well as how they're pronounced, it's not very good at helping with spelling. In this case, though, I think being able to remember the words themselves is one step towards being able to spell them, especially since I tend to exchange messages regularly online with my friend in Finland, which will work very well for practicing spelling itself. The more I write in Finnish, the more I'll be able to recall the spellings of words; at least that's how it works when I write in English.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding what you've just read, please feel free to mention them to me. I am by no means an expert and simply would like to share what I'm learning as I learn it as well as the methods I'm using to retain that information.