#mnemonic device

I’ve just randomly thought up a goated localization for one line in Baby Got Back

Dial 1-900-MIXALOT

0530-393-610に電話して

In the Anglosphere, the most common way to make phone numbers memorable is to spell out words using the T9 keypad letters as a mnemonic. That is, “A”, “B”, and “C” stand for “2”, and “W”, “X”, and “Y” stand for “9”. “Q” and “Z” tend to be avoided, because some keypads have them moved to “1” or “0”, while most of them tolerate having four letters on “7: PQRS” and “9: WXYZ”. If you were to dial “1-900-MIXALOT”, you would end up calling 1-900-649-2568.

(Don’t actually call that number. I think Sir Mix-a-Lot has better things to do than to park a 1-900 number for one hit song. Plus, you have to pay to call a 1-900 number.)

The Japanese equivalent is called goroawase (語呂合わせ), and is based on the many Japanese words for these numbers: on-yomi (Chinese-derived readings), kun-yomi (native Japanese readings), and English loanwords. For example, in goroawase, the digit “1” could be read “ichi”, “it-”, “i”, “hito”, “hi”, and “wan”, or even grouped as “10” and read as “juu”, “ju”, “to”, or “ten”. This is also how students in Japan memorize historical dates (e.g. the year 794 for the founding of Heian-Kyō, the capital in Kyoto, and the year 1192 for [one date for] the founding of the Kamakura Shogunate) or mathematical constants (e.g. √2 = 1.41421356..., √3 = 1.7320508...).

The same digit need not have the same reading in the same goroawase. In this example,

“3”: mi (shortened kun-yomi “mitsu”)

“9”: ku (on-yomi)

“3”: sa (shortened on-yomi “san”)

“6”: rot- (shortened kun-yomi “roku”)

“10”: to (shortened kun-yomi “tou”)

So the number “393-610” can be read out as mikusarotto (ミクサロット), which is the Japanese transcription of “Mix-a-Lot”. If Sir Mix-a-Lot were Japanese and wanted to buy a Japanese phone number, he would probably choose 393-610.

Never

No Never Eat

Nine Eggplants

Every Night. Each

Eggplant

Exists So Everyone

Should Eat

Simply Seven Exactly.

Seven

Simply Shines Wicked

Shorelines, Which

We Saw Widely.

When

Witches Need Water,

No Worries

I was recently struggling to find a way to relate all of these characters together to remember them easier—since they all look very similar.

This is what I've finally come up with.

き (ki) is a key. It opens locks/doors/safes/etc.

さ (sa) is a SAnded down key, the original key could not fit in the keyhole, so you had to refine the edges (remove one horizontal line)

Writers know the struggle: we’re running errands, exercising, cleaning, when the characters in our head start talking. The plot hole solves itself, the twist ending is revealed, the villain finally says the right line. It’s all fine and good if you’ve got a moment to stop and make notes. But if you’re driving, swimming, or chasing a preschooler at the park, you run the risk of forgetting your great ideas.

I learned to use a peg-word mnemonic system in high school psychology, and I’ve always loved it. It’s a simple way to remember a list of items when you don’t have a way to write them down. There are many to choose from, but my favorite uses words that rhyme with the numbers one through ten:

Alkaline, like altitude, is the higher end of the scale (8 and above)