I've toyed around with mnemonics for years now( http://www.totse.com/community/showthread.php?t=2125477&highlight=mnemonics ), but was always too lazy to apply it to language learning. I go more for conversational approaches with grammar, and nothing bores the hell out of me more than the thought of memorizing a long list of words.
Well, I just picked up on it again and now I'm kicking myself in the face for wasting so much time all these months/years without using it. I just filled up 25 Russian flashcards with vertical lists of about 6-9 words each and my success rate is around 90%. I wish I had done this sooner. This works for any language, involves a concept that will be slow in the first few minutes, and then you'll get the hang of it.

____________________________________________ What you need:
1. Lists of words
2. Imagination.
First watch it work. I'll save the theory for later.


Take the russian word for pancake: блин/bleen Now Imagine a pancake on a chain hanging off of flava flave's neck like so:
http://images.buycostumes.com/mgen/merchandiser/31805.jpg and when I say imagine, I mean imagine your ass off. picture details of it, fluffy and a nice tanned color, with butter and syrup dripping from it. Got it? Good. Moving on.

The spanish word for a frightened shudder is escalofrio/eh-scal-oh-free-oh Now imagine a Canadian, on tied up on a scale, scared as fuck going "eh" and shaking so hard that he falls off and says "oh" when he hits the ground, and what do you know he broke free. The more ridiculous/silly the image is, the better.

The arabic word for problem is mushkilah now, imagine an alaskan dog musher. Instead of dogs though he has cows, hence the pronunciation moosh then the musher goes berserk and kills them all with a chainsaw. mushkilah.

The Japanese good morning: oh-high-oh goza-eemas. You wake up in OHIO, fucking a spanish skank that goes.. "ay papi!, mas"

Russian word for christmas tree: yolka. A christmas tree decorated with egg yolk.
Russian word for pleasant: pree-yat-na. I think of a pleasant pre yacht-boarding nap. preferably a nap right on the pier before getting on.

Russian word for not allowed= nyelza. We've all met a guy named nelson, right? At least on the simpsons. Well imagine nelson telling you not to do something, forbidding you. He'll kick your ass if you do.

Word for anger in french- colere/cole-air. Imagine a frenchman, complete with the gay hat and striped shirt, very angrily telling you off, pointing his limp-wristed finger at you. He's so pissed he's turning blue and emitting cold-air.
____________________________ STOP.
.
.
.
Now recite the list to yourself. Now, if you tried you shouldn't have forgotten this list. The theory behind it is self-explanatory once you use it. The crazy images are memorable, the more memorable they are the clearer it is and harder to forget. Try to incorporate sound and smell to your image as well.

Skeptic Q&A:

Q:I need to learn words, not a whole bunch of videos playing in my head.
A: The mental images are a crutch. I've found that after the 4th or 5th recall, sometimes as soon as the second, the crutch disappears.

Q: Too slow.
A: repeating a word like "zapryeshshyeno(forbidden)" from a list 10 times, only to forget it 5 minutes later and have to look up the next time you run into it is too slow. Also, it takes a lot longer to type up/read those descriptions I posted than it does to actually play them in your head.

Q: That's a big word. A: Yes. It still works though, only if I share my image it takes like a paragraph to write out, though it plays fast in my head.

Q: I take too long to think. A: I hadnt used my imagination in years when it started. You get used to it quickly.

Q: this word is from another planet. I cant think of any image to associate. A: Yes you can. It's all imaginative. Think harder.

This definitely works. I don't have the patience to really do this with a word-list or anything, but now that you've reminded me, maybe I'll do 5 words a day or something. Or alternatively, I could use it to memorize the words I encounter in the Princeton course...

EDIT: For прибить I imagined you beatboxing in the middle of a prehistoric forest, while nailing a board to a table. :cool:

You say прибить что-нибудь к чему, so I also imaged a giant "K" in the background. Pretty convoluted, but I think it worked.

For "по сравнению с", I imaged a white Toyota Rav 4 next to a black one, with a pickaninny comparing the two. I then imagined the image sandwiched between 2 giant "C"s, since I couldn't figure out how to incorporate that into a mnemonic.

For a week I've had trouble remembering the word "Впечатление", which means "impression" (as in "first impressions"). I decided to imagine "peach at Lena", as in...a girl named Lena comes to university for the first time and has peaches thrown at her.

Yep...thanks for posting this. Great technique. It takes some time to think of a good image, but once you have it, you have it. And like you said, after you've recalled it a few times it will come much more quickly.

Hah, I remember one day I was walking into high school, and I met my friend. He goes 'you looking forward to the German test this afternoon?' like jokingly, but I hadn't even realised that we had one.

He told me that the test was from a list of 100 words, so in the 2.5 hours I got from my free period and lunch break I used mnemonics to learn the fuck out of all of them. I hadn't even seen most of the words before, due to skipping classes.

I got 110% on the test including the extra credit questions, but I regret not getting a few wrong because the teacher refused to believe that I hadn't cheated. My mark wasn't counted...

But I still remember most of the list even now, including their gender :).

I've known about mnemonics for a few years, but like you I never bothered to just sit down and learn word lists because it was way too boring. I should do though...

I'm running into Russian words that have completely different sounds than anything English...what can be done there? For instance, the word for ice cream, or ice cream cone perhaps. I just learned it a few hours ago in class and now it completely escapes me. Starts with an M sound, I know that much.

I'm running into Russian words that have completely different sounds than anything English...what can be done there? For instance, the word for ice cream, or ice cream cone perhaps. I just learned it a few hours ago in class and now it completely escapes me. Starts with an M sound, I know that much.

Yeah...I'm running into that problem a lot. I think you need to build a base of Russian words, and then you could do the mnemonics using Russian instead of English. And it's мороженое.

I've started to learn japanese and using mnemonics is probably the only sane way of learning the kana and especially the kanji (the alphabets..), when you consider that there are thousands of them to memorize (by the end of 6th grade, a japanese student is supposed to know roughly 1000 kanji and about 2000 by the end of 9th grade (the amount needed to be able to read fluently)).

I find Quizlet an excelent tool for vocab learning ( http://quizlet.com ) and use it for French, Russian and Japanese.

I must be hard-wired old-school-style because I was memorizing over 100 kanji a week during my JLPT prep days, just by writing them down, and putting them into tests in my computer.

The Mnemonics method does sound interesting and imaginative, though I think I would probably try it with different types of info than vocab (as I have no trouble remembering that), for example historical info.

Better than mnemonics: Memorize dialogues. I tried the mnemomic thing for a few weeks, and although I still remember a few of the words, it doesn't really transfer over to everday comprehension/use very well.

I think mnemonics is very helpful in memorizing things for the short term. It has helped me for tests in school where I need to memorize a lot of stuff very quickly. However, if you're learning a language for practical use, it's hard to pick out words you know, then remember what the mnemonic was, then remember what it means. It still helps to get stuff into your mind though if you're having a hard time making it stick.

This is a cool system. It reminds me of the tests from high school: "A baloo is a bear. A peruke is a wig. A yonker is a young man."

I still remember those, plus I remember from trying this system online once that "Hummer" is German for "lobster."
It's been around for awhile; there are some links here (http://www.memory-key.com/language/mnemonics.htm)and here (http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTIM_10.htm).

There is also a site here (http://www.linkwordlanguages.com/)willing to "sell" you this technique, but I see no reason you can't just make them up on your own.