{"id":41038,"date":"2015-05-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/41038\/will-a-memory-palace-help-me-learn-arabic"},"modified":"2023-08-11T04:11:24","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T04:11:24","slug":"will-a-memory-palace-help-me-learn-arabic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/en\/41038\/will-a-memory-palace-help-me-learn-arabic\/","title":{"rendered":"Will a Memory Palace Help Me Learn Arabic?"},"content":{"rendered":"<big>There\u2019s a big alif (\u0623) at the AUB Main Gate, along with a lion (\u0623\u0633\u062f) eating a pineapple (\u0623\u0646\u0627\u0646\u0627\u0633). <br \/>  <br \/>  At the top of the steps there\u2019s a door (\u0628\u0627\u0628) and from here I can see the sea (\u0628\u062d\u0631).<br \/>   <br \/>  At least, that&#8217;s how it is in my mind. <br \/>   <br \/>  About a year ago, I was agonizing over how to memorize even the most basic words in Arabic. Everything was going in one ear and out the other. I knew I needed a storage place in my head to put all these words or they\u2019d really be lost forever. That\u2019s when I remembered the concept of \u201cthe memory palace.\u201d I\u2019d visualize a palace in my head, to put all the words in.<br \/>   <br \/>  The idea of the memory palace was born from a tragedy in Ancient Greece. <br \/>  <br \/>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/41038-1.png\" width=\"100%\"><br \/>  (Image via <a href=\"https:\/\/muslimwall.tumblr.com\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">Tumblr<\/a>)<br \/>  <br \/>  Sometime around 514 BCE, the poet Saimonides was at a banquet. After giving a performance, he went outside. Suddenly, the banquet hall collapsed, crushing everyone inside of it. The bodies were mangled beyond recognition. Saimonides remembered where everyone had been sitting \u2013 and was able to identify the bodies, in order to give them a proper burial. <br \/>   <br \/>  From this grim task, came a useful deduction. Saimonides concluded that people wishing to train their memories must \u201cselect places and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of the things.\u201d And thus was born the \u201cmethod of loci\u201d or the memory palace.<br \/>   <br \/>  Memory palaces work because our spacial memories are generally better than other types of memory. If you really want to commit something to memory, it\u2019s a good idea to imagine a place and to visualize whatever it is you need to remember, and then locate it within the place in your head.<br \/>   <br \/>  Since the days of Saimonides and Cicero people have used the method of loci for all sorts of purposes. In the 1500s, Matteo Ricci famously introduced the memory palace to Chinese elite, who used the techniques to study for their bureaucratic exams.<br \/>   <br \/>  As I did more research on using memory palaces for language learning, I came across the writings of one memory trainer who swears that memory palaces has helped him to perform despite his bipolar disorder.<br \/>   <br \/>  Anthony Metivier has written many books on the subject of memory palaces \u2013 or his own \u201cMagnetic Memory Method,\u201d which he believes could revolutionize language learning across the globe. In his blog and in newsletters on memory training, he writes openly about his own \u201cbad memory\u201d and battles with mental illness \u2013 and how memory techniques saved him.<br \/>   <br \/>  Reviews of Metivier\u2019s work are mixed, but take what\u2019s useful and leave the rest behind. In creating a little memory palace in my head, I was eventually able to memorize the order of the Arabic alphabet \u2013 something that had seemed impossible before. I modified Metivier\u2019s version and placed the alif, the first letter of the alphabet at the entrance of the university where I study, along with images of a bunch of words beginning with that letter. (Metivier recommends creating a separate \u2018palace\u2019 for each word you want to memorize, which was too much work for me).<br \/>   <br \/>  In reading about memory training techniques I\u2019ve found huge comfort in the idea that a good memory isn\u2019t necessarily just something you\u2019re born with &#8212; rather, you can improve it with regular exercise.  <br \/>   <br \/>  Now if only I could get around to exercising\u2026.<\/big>    <figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"187\" height=\"250\" data-id=\"417381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/41038-187x250.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-417381\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/41038-187x250.png 187w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/41038-448x600.png 448w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/41038-765x1024.png 765w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/41038-768x1028.png 768w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/41038.png 956w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 187px) 100vw, 187px\" \/><\/figure><\/figure>    ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><big>There\u2019s a big alif (\u0623) at the AUB Main Gate, along with a lion (\u0623\u0633\u062f) eating a pineapple (\u0623\u0646\u0627\u0646\u0627\u0633).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":417383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_preview_accessed":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"media-embed-type":[],"class_list":["post-41038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"authorship":[42],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.3 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Will a Memory Palace Help Me Learn Arabic?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There\u2019s a big alif (\u0623) at the AUB Main Gate, along with a lion (\u0623\u0633\u062f) eating a pineapple (\u0623\u0646\u0627\u0646\u0627\u0633).\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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