Friday, June 20, 2008

Improve your vocabulary part 3


Use crazy associations.I have been writing quite a lot recently about the linkword method, which involves associating something memorable in your own language to something that sounds similar in the language you are learning. Somebody came up with a great list of French phrases that could be converted in into English. The list appears on a lot of 'joke' websites, but it is in fact the basis of having a great memory, not just for foreign words, but for anything else too. Here are a few examples:FrenchCanaille (rogue, rascal) - can I?ail ou radis? (garlic or radish?) - are you ready?six tonnes de chair (six tons of flesh) - sit on the chairguy vomit sur mon nez (guy vomits on my nose) - give me some moneyoeuf corse (Corsican egg) - of courseNow the trick here is to create a funny scene in your head that will make it impossible to forget. So a French speaker would imagine a huge six-ton elephant trying to sit on a chair, because to him 'sit on the chair' sounds like 'six tons of flesh' in his language.You can read more about linkword here

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