The importance of rhythm for memorization
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My wonderful 2nd grade teacher taught me how to spell Mississippi with a special sing-song rhythm, and I've never forgotten it thereafter. Her jingle makes spelling "Mississippi" — whose shape is as contorted as its riverine course and scared me the first few times I tried to spell it myself, before she taught me the secret / knack — as easy as falling off a log.
Unfortunately, I never learned how to spell "Cincinnati" that way, so I always have to proceed carefully and cautiously when I spell the name of that awesome city in the southwest corner of my home state.
I use a similar technique for remembering my social security number, phone number, lock combinations, and so forth. But I have not been able to apply it to recalling computer passwords, which are a terrible trial for me (ask the department staff and IT guys at Penn how awful I am with passwords and the like). Maybe the reason rhythmic memorization don't work for passwords is that we have many of them for different purposes, plus they require weird combinations of upper and lower case letters, an arbitrary number of numbers, and a set amount of nonalphanumeric symbols.
Rhythm also plays a role in helping me to remember how many days there are in each month:
Thirty days has September — April, June, and November,
All the rest have 31,
Except February, which has 28,
Though it has 29 in a leap year.
Lots of variations in the last two lines, but February never worried me anyway, because it's a special case. It's the number of days in the other eleven months that plagued me before I learned how to rhythmize them.
From a very young age, we use rhythmic melody to help us understand tricky parts of the alphabet — h i jk lmnop. Some of these we make up ourselves, others we inherit from family, friends, elders, and those we trust.
And so on and so forth.
Selected readings
- Archive for Memorization
- "The stupendous powers of memorization in the Indian tradition" (10/23/20) — with valuable bibliography
- "Spelling and intuition" (11/30/23) — with helpful references
- "Language that exercises the brain; poetry and gradations of understanding" (1/7/24)
- "Metered spellings" (3/28/22)
S Frankel said,
June 22, 2025 @ 8:35 am
Cincinnati makes a nice dactylic rhythm.
Philip Taylor said,
June 22, 2025 @ 8:48 am
Hard to discern any obvious rhythm in your variant of the "Thirty days" rhyme, Victor — may I offer the following, in which I find the rhythm shines through :
jhh said,
June 22, 2025 @ 9:18 am
As a kid, my version ended:
All the rest have 31
Except for February,
Which is different.
It subverts the expectation of a rhythm or rhyme, which is entertaining in itself.
I'm reminded of an organizing chant at a Gay Pride march in 1993:
We're here!
We're gay!
WE HAVE E-MAIL!
jhh said,
June 22, 2025 @ 9:20 am
Yikes! I proofread and still messed up:
We're here!
We're queer!
We have e-mail!
(In 1993, I'm sure we thought that word had a hyphen ;) )
Edith said,
June 22, 2025 @ 9:23 am
And who could ever forget the immortal rhyme for remembering Easter:
No need for confusion if we but recall
That Easter on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox doth fall.
Steve B said,
June 22, 2025 @ 10:08 am
Thirty days hath September,
All the rest I can't remember.
ardj said,
June 22, 2025 @ 10:10 am
@Edith
Thank you, thank you. Resolves a difficulty that has worried me for years.
Any thoughts on my aunt by marriage's birthday ?
Kimball Kramer said,
June 22, 2025 @ 10:32 am
For remembering passwords: Pick a song you know and like that has some (obscure or not) connection with the protected file. You can pick a word that reminds you of that song and write it down as long as the connection is not obvious. For example "key" (from Francis Scott Key) will remind YOU of the national anthem but won't trigger that connection in any one else's mind. Anyone else would look for a connection to a physical key. Consider the first line (or any other significant line to you): 0h say can you see, by the dawn's early light?. Make the password: 0scys,Btd'el?, using the first letter of each word and keeping the punctuation. I have used 0 in stead of capital O to include a number. Sometimes if the word "I' is in the song, I substitute 1 to have a number. If the word "you", I substitute 2 (2nd person). There are various other tricks to include a number. There will commonly be commas or question marks or explanation points for punctuation. Keep all punctuation. Use 2 or 3 or 4 lines of the song if you need a long password. I use songs that I remember from my teens that were popular then. There a tens of thousands of songs to choose from and they need not be in English if you speak another language. "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" was written in 1909. Who is going to try that? If a connection-reminder-word is written down the connection must be convoluted and then no one will guess the song or the password. E.g.: "photon", "Ag", "man" for "Light" "Silver-" "man in the moon".
Jon W said,
June 22, 2025 @ 11:01 am
I learned
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November.
All the rest have thirty-one
Except February, which has four score and four
And in leap year has one more.
Jon W said,
June 22, 2025 @ 11:04 am
Oops — I *thought* that was what I learned. I guess it can't have been, unless February has 24 days. It's a puzzlement.
Rodger C said,
June 22, 2025 @ 11:39 am
Four score and four = 84. What's a word for sixes?
Rodger C said,
June 22, 2025 @ 11:40 am
"Two dozen and four"?
Y said,
June 22, 2025 @ 1:15 pm
For the months, I learned to count on the knuckles of my hand, from the index to the pinky. The knuckles are the long months, the valleys between them are the short ones. When you get to the pinky knuckle, that is July, you start again on it, for August, and go back. Or you can start August at the index again.
SlideSF said,
June 22, 2025 @ 2:03 pm
Em Eye Crooked-letter Crooked-letter Eye Crooked-letter Crooked-letter Eye Humpback Humpback Eye.
Victor Mair said,
June 22, 2025 @ 3:06 pm
@SlideSF
Wow! Almost looks like the Mississippi. A lot of syllables!
Not what my teacher taught me.
Philip Taylor said,
June 22, 2025 @ 3:20 pm
"Humpback" (in the sense which I think is intended here) is not a British term (we use "hunchback"), and the latter has been shunned for so long in British English that when I first read SlideSF's text my mind immediately went to humpback whales, as a result of which I was totally unable to think what letter might be implied.
Yves Rehbein said,
June 22, 2025 @ 3:43 pm
I learned a non-verbal mnemonic for the days of the months: Put your fists together side by side, the knuckles are 31 days, the soft skin between them are shorter[*] months, and there is no skin between Juli and August.
[*]: short one day on average but February is different. If you can remember that, you can probably remember the months individually, still it helps to form an episodic memory.
As for rhythm, I practically learned English from Eminem, and Ibdare say it involved a fair amount of throwing hands, too. Perhaps that's why I still confuse collon aids with colonnades, as of touch tone dial tone phone number sequences.
Stephen Goranson said,
June 22, 2025 @ 4:11 pm
For long and short months I was also taught the knuckle method,
though my dear daughter thought it silly.
Viseguy said,
June 22, 2025 @ 4:48 pm
Mississippi, I have always found easy because all of the internal consonants are doubled. For Cincinnati, perhaps a viable mnemonic would be to imagine an ancient Roman paterfamilias toasting the birth of male twins: cin cin nati!
Or perhaps not.
SlideSF said,
June 22, 2025 @ 5:41 pm
@Victor Mair – It was just a bit of juvenile doggerel, and I never took any derogatory meaning from it, the naivete of children notwithstanding. But to your point – I never heard of a hunchback referred to as a humpback in the US. Most people were familiar with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, even before Le Miz became a popular musical. In my callow mind the word humpback made me think of a camel rather than a whale, or even a person with kyphosis. Although it seemed a stretch even at the time, I merely thought of the curve of a camel's back as somewhat analogous to the curve at the top of the "P".
Also, this was not taught to us in school, but rather something some smart-alecky kid repeated and got passed around. It was said to a sing-song meter, and hence proves your original point that that type of memorization has a lasting effect, since it is well over 60 years ago that I first (and probably last) heard it.
Michael Vnuk said,
June 22, 2025 @ 5:57 pm
Growing up in Australia in the 1960s, I also learned how to spell Mississippi with a rhythmic technique. I don't know who taught it to me or why? Perhaps I saw it on an American TV show.
As to Cincinnati, I've had very few reasons to spell it. However, now that Victor says it is a problem for him, perhaps using the same rhythm as for Mississippi will help:
M-I-S,
S-I-S,
S-I-P-P-I
C-I-N,
C-I-N,
N-then-A-T-I
Interestingly, my first attempt, with N and 'then' transposed, produced a less satisfying rhythm.
Michael Vnuk said,
June 22, 2025 @ 6:14 pm
This mnemonic doesn't have much rhythm, but it is about how to spell a placename.
Woolloomooloo is an inner-city suburb of Sydney with varying doubled letters. I heard from someone who lived in Sydney that spelling can be remembered with the mnemonic 'sheep-toilet-cow-toilet', producing 'wool-loo-moo-loo'.
When I briefly tried to find out how old this mnemonic is, I got hits from as far back as 2010, and I'm guessing it's older than that. I also found that Woolloomooloo, Mississippi, Cincinnati and others were discussed here in 2022, https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=54141
Michael Vnuk said,
June 22, 2025 @ 7:07 pm
Victor writes: 'From a very young age, we use rhythmic melody to help us understand tricky parts of the alphabet — h i jk lmnop.'
I learned the alphabet in my first year of school in 1963 (in Australia). We recited it with no rhythm or breaks. When 'Sesame Street' was first shown on Australian TV (4 January 1971, according to internet sources), I was surprised to find that there was an alphabet song, with, among other features, odd clumping of letters to fit a rhythm. (Younger siblings watched it regularly. Being ten, I was wasn't going to watch a show designed for younger children, but I have to admit that its attractive mix of animation, puppets, guest appearances, songs, humour, imagination and creativity meant that I saw a substantial amount.)
Victor Mair said,
June 22, 2025 @ 7:12 pm
With tips from other commenters, I just made up my own very effective metered mnemonic for Cincinnati
Chas Belov said,
June 22, 2025 @ 8:58 pm
The main issue with picking a song would be ¿how do you vary it for each website so you have a unique password for each site?
Without going into details, as I don't want to compromise my security, I do have a pattern that I can use to produce unique passwords for each website, with additional pattern complexity for websites I need to be more secure.
But even then, since it seems that so many sites have rules which break my pattern, so, while it is usually sufficient that I remember my pattern, I still have to keep a document of sites that have rules that break my pattern, as well as rules to fix those breaks.
It also means that every time I need to change my overall pattern due to expiring passwords I have to retrain myself in the revised pattern, which leads to my having to do multiple password resets during the transition period.
Victor Mair said,
June 22, 2025 @ 9:46 pm
@Chas Belov
It's maddening, even for someone like you who has his act together. Can you imagine how torturesome it must be for someone like me who can barely manage to keep one password in mind?
maidhc said,
June 22, 2025 @ 11:05 pm
Isikyus said,
June 22, 2025 @ 11:39 pm
> Maybe the reason rhythmic memorization don't work for passwords is that we have many of them for different purposes, plus they require weird combinations of upper and lower case letters, an arbitrary number of numbers, and a set amount of nonalphanumeric symbols.
The current (NIST, I think) security recommendation is for programmers not to have all those rules, precisely for that reason: it makes passwords too hard to remember.
The standard security advice nowadays is (a) use a password manager if you can, and (b), if you can't, use a long series of (ideally random) words. This is easier for humans to remember, but harder for computers to guess.
Julian said,
June 23, 2025 @ 1:25 am
Kennedy's revised Latin primer, published 1906, still in use in my expensive private school in 1970, would you believe it, has an appendix called "memorial lines the gender of Latin substantives" that runs for several pages of mnemonic rhymes.
Having that sort of nerdish mind, I once knew quite a bit of it
"The gender of a Latin noun
By meaning, form or use is shown. ..
"To nouns that cannot be declined
The neuter gender is assigned
Examples fas and nefas give
And the verb-noun infinitive …
"Common are sacerdos, dux,
Vates, parens et coniunx,
Cives, comes, custos, vindex,
Adulescens, infants, index .. "
And much more.
Heady stuff. If you doubt me, look for the free pdf
Jerry Packard said,
June 23, 2025 @ 6:01 am
I love it. That’s a lot better than amo, amas, amat…
David Marjanović said,
June 23, 2025 @ 6:24 am
Neuter consonant stems:
aes, os, os, mel, lac, vas, ver,
cor, caput, marmor, iter, cadaver.
Feminine i-stems:
febris, sitis, turris,
puppis, vis, securis.
(…and a bunch of placenames, especially Greek ones, and tussis; there's a rhyme with tussis in it, but I didn't learn it.)
Masculine o-stems in -er that keep their -e- in declension:
puer, socer, vesper, gener,
die Adjektiva prosper, tener,
und asper, miser, liber – frei –
behalten e vor r stets bei!
Julian said,
June 23, 2025 @ 7:49 am
@David M
That's not quite Kennedy
You mean you had a German text book that used the same idea?
crturang said,
June 23, 2025 @ 8:06 am
For the months of the year, no mnemonic is needed. Make a fist. At the base of each finger, there is a "hill" and between successive hills there is a "valley". Start counting the months from the little finger's hill, counting hills and valleys. When you get to the hill at the forefinger, count that hill again and count back. Hills are longer months. valleys are shorter ones.
Michael Vnuk said,
June 23, 2025 @ 8:45 am
A mnemonic is a memory aid, so crturang's fist for the months of the year is actually a mnemonic. Indeed, at the top of Wikipedia's 'Mnemonic' article is an example of a mnemonic – a diagram of knuckles that is almost the same as crturang's fist.
crturang said,
June 23, 2025 @ 9:37 am
@Michael Vnuk: Thanks, I should have said no verbal mnemonic.
Erick Tejkowski said,
June 23, 2025 @ 12:27 pm
I was lucky to have a similarly minded music teacher as a child student where the class learned all of the "helping verbs". At age 7. Still remember them.
be am is are was were been
have has had
do does did
can could
shall should
will would
may might
must
seems
becomes
being
Roscoe said,
June 23, 2025 @ 12:29 pm
Homer Simpson, frantically attempting to remember what to do in a house fire:
“Oh, the song, the song!…‘When the fire starts to burn, there’s a lesson you must learn, something something, then you see, you’ll avoid catastrophe!’…D’oh!”
Tom Dawkes said,
June 23, 2025 @ 1:55 pm
On Mississippi — I was taught in class (aged 8 or 9):
M Eye double S Eye double S Eye double P Eye
Y said,
June 23, 2025 @ 2:04 pm
Mississippi is easy: just double everything. Massachusetts is a little trickier: double everything, then find that -uss- would be pronounced wrong, and un-double it.
Killer said,
June 24, 2025 @ 2:18 pm
When I encounter two-factor authentication (i.e., you're logging into something on your computer and they send a code to your mobile phone that you have to enter on the computer), I have trouble remembering the six digits and have to look back and forth a couple of times. But if I read them off my phone aloud, and then repeat them aloud with the same inflection as I type them into the computer, then I can always remember them the first time without looking back. I even find that if I imagine reading them aloud both times, with a particular inflection, that works, too.
Philip Taylor said,
June 24, 2025 @ 3:24 pm
My problem is not remembering the digits, it is knowing where my mobile telephone is. My landline has six instantions in six fixed locations, and it always possible to get to one of the six in just a few seconds. But my mobile telephone (well, I have two, but the problem is the same for both) is that I never have any idea where it is, and whilst a telephone call would set it ringing for long enough for me to locate it (probably), a text message produces a brief sound, frequently inaudible given the distance between the 'phone and myself, and the ten minutes allowed is far too short to enable me to find it 99% of the time …
Philip Taylor said,
June 25, 2025 @ 4:17 am
But more on rhythm : when I was very young (I don't know, maybe five or so), my mother taught me to recite the alphabet backwards. I remember it to this day, and it is clear (to me, at least) that the rhythm is key to the memorisation — "Zed why ex and double-you vee, you tea ess and are queue pee; oh en em and ell kay jay; eye aitch gee, eff ee dee, and sea bee eh".
Roscoe said,
June 25, 2025 @ 12:08 pm
Interesting…I learned the “backwards alphabet song” as:
Zee why ex doubleyouvee and you,
tea and ess and are and queue,
Pee oh en em ell kay jay,
eye aitch gee eff eedeeseabeeay.
Tom said,
June 25, 2025 @ 5:27 pm
C I N… C I N… N A T… I
Victor Mair said,
June 25, 2025 @ 9:04 pm
@Tom
got it
thanks
Cincinnati. Cincinnati
Victor Mair said,
June 25, 2025 @ 9:04 pm
I remember counting, for timing purposes, "one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four…."