Major System By Beniowski

Motivation

In this article we'll dive into a system that will allow us to memorize sequences of numbers.

You probably struggle trying to learn a phone number, your zip code, maybe bank related IDs, or a new ID code because you've move to a new country.

It may be that your phone got stolen and you're left wondering what would you do if you don't know the phone number of your loved one by heart.

In this article you'll learn:

• What The Major System is.
• Get some practice.

The Major System

The core idea behind the Major System is that a word is easier to remember than a number.

The Major System, aka "The Mnemonic Major System" consist in using phonetics to associate numbers with sounds.

A quick example, let's take the number 42, The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

The number 42 can potentially translate to a word like rune. If you remember the word rune you will be able to map it to the number 42. It's easier to remember the word rune than to remember the number 42. Its even easier to remember the word if you picture the image of a rune in your head. This visual representation enhance our ability to retrieve the information from our memory.

So, how this magic works?

How it works?

In his book The Anti-Absurd or Phrenotypic English Pronouncing and Orthographical Dictionary, Bartlomiej Beniowski

You'll find his mapping of consonants to numbers.

Number	Consonant
0	s,z
1	t,d, th
2	n
3	m
4	r
5	l
6	h, ch, sh, j
7	k, g
8	f,v,w
9	p, b

Let's encript first. Going back to the example of remember 42.

4 -> r
2 -> n

We can add any vowel surrounding r and n to make a word to remember:

• run
• ran
• rune

Whenever you want to decode it, just strip the word out the vowels, and map the consonants.

Additional tips

This technique is brilliant, it actually helped me memorizing some long numbers. But for it to work well, you need to combine it in a smart way:

1. group numbers
2. map
3. make it an image

Ex:

2926941

1. Group numbers

29 26 942

2. Map

29 -> n + p,b
26 -> n + h, ch, sh, j
942 -> p,b + r + n

A possible option:

nap nacho pirate

3. Make an image

Now make it a vivid image

A pirate sleeping on a gigantic floating nacho.

Some thoughts

It may look like a lot, but it's a system to remember numbers. It's not perfect.

The cons:

• you need to remember the system mappings.
• you need to come up with some word combination.
• you'll have some delay when trying to map them back in your head. Just grab pen and paper ;)

Eventually the image and the words go away and all it's left is the bare number memorization. This helps to break that initial recall effort.

Whenever I found myself in a situation where I needed to remember too many numbers, this sytem helped me. Let me know if this worked for you too.

References

• The anti-absurd or phrenotypic English pronouncing & orthographical dictionary
• The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.