Since numbers dominate our lives I have begun to look at ways in which to learn combinations of numbers. The Major System is over 300 years old and was introduced by Stanislaus Mink von Wennsshein (awesome name) and later developed by Dr Richard Grey (less awesome name).
Each numeral is associated with several consonants. Vowels and the consonants w, h and y are ignored. These can be used as "fillers" to make sensible words from the resulting consonant sequences. The most popular sequence can be seen above.
Each numeral maps to a set of similar sounds with similar mouth and tongue positions. The link is phonetic, that is to say, it is the consonant sounds that matter, not the spelling. Therefore a word like action would encode the number 762 (k-ch-n), not 712 (k-t-n); and ghost would be 701 (g-z-t), while, because the gh in enough is pronounced like an f, the word enough encodes the number 28 (n-f). Similarly, double letters are disregarded. The word missile is mapped to 305 (m-z-l), not 3005 (m-z-z-l). To encode 3005 one would use something like mossy sail. Often the mapping is compact. Hindquarters, for example, translates unambiguously to 2174140 (n-d-qu-r-t-r-z), which amounts to 7 digits encoded by 8 letters, and can be easily visualized.
The system is also employed with phone numbers. One would typically make up multiple words, preferably a sentence, or an ordered sequence of images featuring the owner of the number. An advantage of the major system is that it is possible to use a computer to automatically translate the number into a set of words. One can then pick the best of several alternatives.
I find this easy to understand in theory but in practice I don't find it easy at all.
zoo goo veg
no zoo nun
yellow muff
07872022338
as amusing as I found this, I can't get it to help me remember my phone number.
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