The Phonetic Alphabet
Basically, the phonetic alphabet associates every one-digit number with a consonant phonetic sound. This sounds more complicated than it actually is, so don’t be afraid of reading the rest of this article.
Range of Use
The phonetic alphabet I am talking about is used as a memory aid. Numbers are very hard to remember, so transposing them in words makes it a lot easier to remember them.
It may take a little time to get used to it but you will bypass a lot of frustration once you got comfortable using it.
Consonants
Fortunately, there are 10 basic consonant phonetic sound in English, so each sound can be associated with one digit. Of course, there are more consonants, but if you take ‘p’ and ‘b’ for example, you see that the basic sound can be the same for different letters.
This is how the mapping of numbers and consonant sounds looks like:
| Number | Letters | Mnemonic |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | t, d | ‘t’ stands on one bar. |
| 2 | n | ‘n’ stands on two bars. |
| 3 | m | ‘m’ stands on three bars. |
| 4 | r | Four |
| 5 | l | The Roman numeral L stands for 50 |
| 6 | j, sh, ch, soft g | J resembles the mirror image of 6 |
| 7 | k, hard c, hard g | Two 7’s can form a ‘K’ |
| 8 | f, v, ph | A handwritten ‘f’ and 8 look similar. |
| 9 | p, b | P is the mirror image of 9. |
| 0 | s, z, soft c | Zero |
Learn this table by heart if you consider using the phonetic alphabet for memory improvement. Seriously, if it takes ages for you to convert the numbers you won’t be able to use the phonetic alphabet efficiently.
Vowels
Vowels don’t have any value. They are used as fillers, so you don’t end up with any nonexisting words when converting numbers.
Example
30754 842 could be converted to muscular brain. If you transpose muscular brain back to numbers you get 30754 842 again.
Memorizing muscular brain is a lot easier than memorizing 30754 842 isn’t it? Especially because you can apply other memorizing techniques to remember muscular brain that don’t work for numbers.
Tags: consonants, memory, phonetic alphabet, sound, vowels
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[...] to something that your subconscious will recall for you. To be able to do that, you should learn The Phonetic Alphabet. It gives you the possibility to convert numbers into words. And that’s exactly what you want [...]
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