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It's like starting an introductory music lesson with complicated bits of theory– sure, it's important, but someone just starting out wants to play "Mary had a Little Lamb" or something else they recognize! On top of that, introducing the major system with pi instead of phone numbers is both cruel and takes away the main advantage of the major system. I play around with mnemonics and it always annoys me how people doing intros to mnemonics seem dead set on cramming the memory palace technique in right at the beginning. More on-topic: It's difficult to assign a metric to how number-punnable a language is, but are there languages in which number sound-based mnemonics are difficult? (It should be easy enough to work around the limitations of number readings by cleverly assigning syllables to numerals, which is what the English mnemonic methods try to do anyway) Now that's one way to make things memorable! I tried today's (or yesterday's) date in that generator:, which gave me プレイ隠語陰部ピンク (Google Translate: Play jargon genital pink). They used furigana to to turn the number into a slogan that included oishii oniku (0141029). It is nearly 30 years since I was in Japan but I can still remember most of the digits of the telephone number of a restaurant I used to see advertised on the tube. Try your PIN, birthday, or phone extension! It's quite used to make phone numbers, history dates, and mathematical constants more memorable – and they can be very creative, especially in advertising. There's a whole phenomenon of number/word play in Japanese called "goroawase" (語呂合わせ). …and I think I remember reading something about Portuguese sailors' "oito" still being used for 8 in Japanese card games. I think that "9 = ku, kono" should be "9 = ku, kokono".Įverybody already knew this, I'm sure, but Japanese number-word gambling slang is supposedly the origin of "yakuza", from three numbers ya, ku, za… The first mora of the yamatokotoba (traditional) counting numbers are also unique, and widely used not only in mnemonics, but rapid counting: hi, fu, mi, yo, i, mu, na, ya, ko. English furigana is now easily spotted in popular media such as manga if this trend continue, and kanji continue in use, I wonder if gairaigo (non-Chinese loans) will settle as another category of conventional "readings" for kanji, making the script even more polyvalent. Recently I've noticed a phenomenon where native Japanese speakers will orally describe a kanji in terms of an English translation – e.g. The thing is, that operation is exactly how kanji got " kun readings" in the first place: as translation glosses by learners of a foreign language. Speaking of English furigana: When foreign kanji learners are studying kanji, we talk about the "readings" and "meanings" of a character but from a linguist's point of view, the "meaning" is just an English translation ascribed to a kanji, i.e. 1039 could be ten san koko or "Heavenly-mountain-here", pivoting from three different language families! So 1 can also be wan, 2 tsū, 3 su(ri), etc., giving even more possibilities for mnemonics. These days when English words pop up as furigana glosses for kanji, it's also common to ascribe English-derived readings for the digits, as shown by Wikipedia. Filed by Victor Mair under Numbers, Writing systems.Marshall Unger, Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning (University of Hawai'i Press, 2004): "How would a magician memorize Chinese characters?" Highly recommended, if you're interested in the sheer memorization of characters. While we're talking about Chinese and Japanese numero-mnemonics, I cannot help but mention a most intriguing chapter (number 5) in J. Sometimes "wa", similar to "ha" in "hachi" is mapped to 8, but this can be confused with 0. "Ji" is also used in mnemonics.Ĩ = ya, hachi. Sometimes "wa" for ring is mapped to 0, but this can be confused with 8.Ģ = ni, futa.

Helvetica Baskin Robbins points out that Japanese numero-mnemonics has an advantage in that the numbers have different readings, thus allowing for more flexibility in coming up with zany ("quasi-nonsense"), memorable phrases to assist in recalling sequences:Ġ = rei, zero.