Nelson Dellis here and another episode

of Random Memory Tips.

And I just wanted to give you guys a little update

on how my Drops 2K Challenge Learning Dutch, is going.

And it's going well.

I've learned about 1,000 words.

We're about 30 days in.

I've been working on the app every day.

I maybe learn about three or four modules a day,

which is about 17 words per modules.

So 17 times four, 68.

Obviously that doesn't add up to 1,000 over 30 days

but some of the days I actually spend

just reviewing past ones that I've learned already.

If some of you have read the book by Seth Godin, The Dip,

you know that when you start something new

there's always kind of a quick rise

in achievement and excitement.

And that was me when I started.

I was learning words real quick.

It was fun.

The whole process was novel.

And words were sticking.

It was very easy to keep track of 200, 300 words.

But obviously as I started learning more

you kind of get this dip.

And this is where most people will quit

with any given task,

whether it's learning some new skill

or trying to stick with a habit for 30 days plus.

And so now I'm in that dip.

I'm learning more and more words.

It's kind of building on each other.

It's getting to be pretty heavy

in terms of information that I need to hold

and I gotta push through

to come out on the other end of that dip.

So I figure today we'll talk about some examples

of words that I've encountered

and how I went about memorizing them.

I've done a video before

about how to memorize foreign words.

It's pretty simple.

Just come up with a picture for the thing,

the foreign word,

and come up with a picture for the meaning,

smash 'em together.

That's what I've been doing.

But the beautiful thing about Dutch is

that some of these words are actually pretty weird

in themselves, which makes them memorable.

Some of them are really fun to say

and just roll off the tongue

which also makes them memorable.

Some, literally, translate to some really funny combinations

that just make it inherently memorable.

So there's actually a lot of help there

when it comes to memorizing.

So without further ado,

let's maybe go through some of my favorite words

that I've encountered so far

and how I memorized them.

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So the first one is this word spin.

What does it mean?

Spider, so if I put those together

all I think of is basically

that a spider spins a web.

Right, makes sense?

So this word was actually pretty easy

because it almost means or has part of it's meaning

or something that it does

applies to the actual word in the definition.

So that one's easy, spin spider.

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Some of these words come up like this

where they just sound pleasing

and they're just inherently memorable for that reason

and I don't really use a technique.

One of those words, in Dutch, is pompoen.

Pompoen stands for pumpkin.

And so it's pretty close, pumpkin, pompoen.

But I've been saying it to my kid

over and over again.

He loves the sound of it.

The pompoen, the pompoen, the pompoen.

So it's just kind of drilled itself into my memory.

And it just is easy and sounds fun.

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This next one is a big word, sinaasappelsap.

And what it means is orange juice.

So if I put those together

I come up with a pretty in depth image,

especially for that first word.

So sinaasappelsap, I think of a sinus,

I think of an apple,

I think of tree sap,

and that's sinaasappelsap.

Sinus, apple, sap.

Now I gotta relate that to orange juice somehow.

So I kind of make a little story

connecting one to the other.

So imagine that somebody sneezes

because their sinuses are blocked up,

out of their nose, their sinus area

flies out an apple that kind of transmorphs into sap,

like a sappy apple.

And it get's caught into an orange juice cup.

And maybe by the time it lands in the cup

it's a beautiful glass of Tropicana orange juice.

So sinus apple sap orange juice.

And that's it.

That's a really great image in itself.

And so when I see sinaasappelsap

I can't help but think of the orange juice

at the end of the story.

And if I see orange juice

I can't help think of the reverse.

The sap apple sinus, sinaasappelsap.

Say that 10 times.

Sinaasappelsap, sinus apple.

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This is one of my absolute favorites so far

is how to say mustache in Dutch and it's snor, S-N-O-R.

So I literally just picture

a guy with a big mustache snoring.

And I try give some action and life to that picture.

So I picture the little hairs of his mustache

kind of overhanging his mouth,

flailing in the wind there as he snores really loudly.

Snor, mustache.

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So now here's another interesting thing in Dutch

is as you learn kind of basic words

you get these compound words

that mean other words.

So one good example is struisvogel

which means ostrich.

But if you break it into parts, struis and vogel.

Vogel is bird, ostrich is a bird.

And struis which is stress.

So it literally translates to a stressed bird.

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That image in itself actually makes an ostrich,

it makes sense for an ostrich.

But it helps with the pictures.

I just picture this stressed out ostrich,

sticks it's head in the ground to hide from the stress.

That's a case where the actual, literal meaning,

even though it doesn't mean ostrich, per se,

makes it way more memorable.

I can't think of another stressed out bird but an ostrich.

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And then you get words that are

representing something pretty simple in English.

And then you get this God forsaken huge word

in the language.

In this case, we're talking about ladybug or ladybird,

depending on where you're from.

And the word is lieveheersbeestje,

which is this huge word.

I try to break it down into parts

but I don't really know all of what those words mean,

except maybe beestje,

I know that means beast or creature.

And so lieveheers, actually translates to lady.

But that doesn't matter.

Because in terms of my image,

I gotta break it down to what it sounds

like to me in English.

So lieveheer sounds like leave here, right?

So I'm leaving something here.

And then beestje makes me think of a beast.

It actually reads like a beast.

So that actually works.

So I imagine leaving here.

At some point I leave here, a beast,

maybe I hype it up that it's some scary beast.

And actually it's just this tiny little ladybird, just tiny.

So I leave here this beast.

And it's kind of ironic, memorable,

the fact that it's actually a tiny, little ladybug beast.

So that's it guys.

Quick update, a few words that give you

an insight into how I think about

memorizing all these thousands of words

that I'm going after.

And how you could maybe take a language

and learn some quick vocabulary.

And I'll be back in about a month

with another update

with my progress learning Dutch.

Thanks for watching, guys.

As usual, like, subscribe, all the things.

I'm out, da.

(snaps fingers)

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