I need a bunch of mnemonics in a hurry because I want to read Ovid. I wrote down the words from the glossary in the back of the book that I don't know and started making up mnemonic sentences on the fly like:

acernus = of maple. "A MAPLE TREE DOES NOT PRODUCE ACORNS".

fibula = buckle. "BUCKLE YOUR LIP SO YOU DON'T TELL FIBULAS".

fistula = pipe. "I BUSTED HIS PIPE WITH MY FIST BECAUSE I HATE SMELL OF SMOKE."

foedo = defile. "MY PET DOG "FOEDO" DEFILED ON THE FLOOR."

and so on. Yikes. I don't want to have to make these up for a couple hundred words so I thought, because someone out there in cyberspace already has.

Does anyone know of a website that supplies a mnemonic for a desired word?

Is there any particular reason you're using mnemonics to remember vocabulary? I think it's the wrong tool for the job...

Maybe have a look at Memrise - it's primarily SRS, but people often add mnemonics to the cards.

Aikynaro Wrote:Is there any particular reason you're using mnemonics to remember vocabulary? I think it's the wrong tool for the job...

How else am I supposed to remember a long list of words quickly without mnemonics?

As one author stated, the old way of acquiring vocabulary, by looking it up in the dictionary every time you meet a new word, simply takes too long.

I need something to link the new word with what is already in my head, in order to remember it. Hence, "acorn is not from maple tree" helps me remember that acernus = of maple.

john555 Wrote:How else am I supposed to remember a long list of words quickly without mnemonics?

SRS ?

From what I remember, most mnemonics my latin teacher used to give us where mostly rhymes for the most common declensions. I'm not sure mnemonics would be that efficient for a language that doesn't have the visual impact of kanji, and I don't think there is a "Reviewing the Latin Vocabulary" website either - if you're so intent on using mnemonics, I'm afraid you'll have to make up your own.

You might also want to check the anki shared decks website https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/ - There might be a latin deck that you could use.

Here's my question about SRS without mnemonics: When you start with a "deck" of brand new words you want to learn, if you don't create mnemonics ahead of time, how does the whole review process work?

Do you look at the first "card", say "nope, don't know what it is", turn it over, look at the answer, and hope that you remember it the next time you look at the card? How many pass throughs with the cards does it take to learn a particular word this way?

I'd rather just make up mnemonics for the new words.

That's pretty much what I do. Each card is different - it just depends on how 'sticky' the word is. Some stick the first time, some sit around for a week or more before getting moved along. Everything matures at some point - the very few that never progress I end up deleting.

I don't know how many words you'll need to read Ovid but I imagine it's a lot. Coming up with thousands of little stories for words sounds very time-consuming and messy to me - but hey, let us know how it goes.

john555 Wrote:Here's my question about SRS without mnemonics: When you start with a "deck" of brand new words you want to learn, if you don't create mnemonics ahead of time, how does the whole review process work?

Do you look at the first "card", say "nope, don't know what it is", turn it over, look at the answer, and hope that you remember it the next time you look at the card? How many pass throughs with the cards does it take to learn a particular word this way?

Yes that'd be how it goes - you can spice up the exercise a bit by writing down the word and its translation each time you pass by it. You could also do two cards per words (English > latin / Latin > english), which would help cement each word more easily. You could also try to work the word you want to learn into a sentence (or better yet, copy / paste an existing sentence from Ovid for instance =) ) and add that as a third type of card, helping yourself memorize the word through context and repetition.

The problem with mnemonics for words outside the kanjisphere is that you lack the visual anchor of primitive elements. Kanjis are like lego bricks, each construct is different, but the building blocks are always the same, so you have a very strong visual anchor on which to build mnemonics upon. With latin, you don't really have something of the sort --- which means that you might end up with a confusing mess of mnemonics that follow little to no rules.

But in the end, it's your project, so by all means do try what you feel like trying. It might just work for you ! Let us know how it goes.

john555 Wrote:Do you look at the first "card", say "nope, don't know what it is", turn it over, look at the answer, and hope that you remember it the next time you look at the card? How many pass throughs with the cards does it take to learn a particular word this way?

Yes. About 5, for a total of ~12 seconds. 5-10 words at a time, steps 1 10 60, learn ahead limit 1.

(This assumes that you have a clear one-to-one mapping from word to whatever aspect of the word it is you're memorizing (the reading, in my case)).

Aikynaro Wrote:That's pretty much what I do. Each card is different - it just depends on how 'sticky' the word is. Some stick the first time, some sit around for a week or more before getting moved along. Everything matures at some point - the very few that never progress I end up deleting.

I don't know how many words you'll need to read Ovid but I imagine it's a lot. Coming up with thousands of little stories for words sounds very time-consuming and messy to me - but hey, let us know how it goes.

I already have a fair Latin vocabulary from high school/university courses. The edition of Ovid I have (Book 8 of the Metamorphoses) lists all the words in the glossary at the back and there's around 2,500 I think. Of those, there are around 500 that I need to review/learn.

The good thing is a lot of Latin words are related to each other, e.g., calesco, incalesco macto, mactatus etc.