A few weeks ago, in one of the Facebook's fanpages called in Polish Kartografia ekstremalna (Extreme cartography) I saw a map that can be useful not only for those who learn Polish, but also for all that people who think visit Poland and will need to move from one city to another. It's a map with names of Polish cities written in the way that an English speaker can articulate it correctly. Let's have a look (when you click in the photo, you can see it bigger):
I must admit that I wasn't able to recognize some of them... In my case the problem is that many time I don't know which is the ponunciation of words I had never heard. I imagine that there are a lot of funny, I don't know, may I say "collocation"? I mean, that the two or more words that someone put together give the pronunciation, but I'm sure in most cases they have no sense, like for example "Gel on Agora", "Be A Poodle, Ask Her" or my favourite: "π Wow".
Do you think that it's a good idea to try to memorize very difficult words in this way? In my opinion it can be the solution for many of us, although, we have to remember that it can happen that when we see the name or word written originally, we won't recognize it! Is it possible...? I tried a lot of strategies to remember strange nouns, adjectives and verbs in different languages and it turned out that the trick to associate them with something that sounds familiar just works. What's your experience?
Any associations that we can build when learning new vocabulary in a foreign language are crucial. Sometimes they may be silly, but it's even better, because it will make the word easier to remember. I do this all the time when learning French :)
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