40 by 40 Images

After making the 'Eleven Behaviour Scenes' article, I was trying to learn some foreign vocabulary, rote, and I thought how useful it would be to have an image which represents the final two letters of a foreign word.

The language I am looking at has a Roman alphabet but a lot of accents which greatly change the pronunciation of the letters. I considered a 40 by 40 letter system where the 40 letters are A throught to Z (26 letters) and then, potentially, 14 extra letters. So all 40 by 40 letter pairs would need 1600 visuals.

One idea I had was to make a visual by using 320 icon images: if each icon image is used in 5 scenes then 40 x 40 = 1600 scenes get made.

I was thinking that I could start at AA, and use an icon from the 'Eleven Behaviour Scenes' article in 5 visuals: AA, AB, AC, AD, AE. The icon would not be positioned above the item needing memorisation; instead, the icon would be at floor level and on the left hand side.

Then the same icon in visual AB will use a different fill colour based on numbers 11 to 20 from the article about enumerating colours. I would use the same icon for AA, AB, AC, AD and AE; but AF would be the next icon on the list. Each icon will use a fill colour from 11 to 20; and the scene will always have a white background.

In another article, I explored how a story involving a person doing an action to a person can represent the spelling of a foreign word (well, the first syllables of the foreign word). By imagining that happening within the icon scene, the spelling of the word ending is represented as well.

I also think that this approach would make a good peg system in general.

As a quick way to generate icons for 301 to 320, I will re-use some of my 'memory road' icons. Memory Road Icons and More icons

Maybe the scenes would be more distinctive if the icons each sit on a terrain. To try out that idea, I have made a list of 26 terrains which are used on a rotation pattern: scene 1 uses terrain 1 and, 26 scenes later, scene 27 uses the same terrain as scene 1 did, etc..

The terrains are:

Brick wall