Sounds as Digits
So far, I have looked at how a word can become digits because of its spelling.
A different approach is to use the sound of a word: its phonetics.
So, “Citrus” might have its C interpreted as an 'S' sound because it sounds like 'S' when someone says, “Citrus”. I don't use that approach here.
With my approach, the sound of a word is not important but the spelling is. This is an opportunity though to say that there are a lot of memory courses in the world. Many use phonetics rather than actual spelling.
The next lesson has 100 syllables which, in some cases, I will use as a way to turn two-digit numbers into words or vice versa. The course will really heavily re-use that idea. So don't skim over it.
Soundalike Visuals
Sometimes, you want a visual image for a conept that is hard to express as an image. It can be handy to think of another similar-sounding word and to use it as a substitute. For example, the road named Caxton Road. I could struggle to think of a visual for "Caxton" but it sounds a bit like "cat's tongue"; so a cat sticking its tongue out might be my visual for imagining a scene where "Caxton" needs to be recalled.
Sometimes, the soundalike approach is useful for learning foreign vocabulary: the soundalike image can be imagined in a story where the meaning of the foreign word occurs. E.g. "Piccolo" is a foreign word for small. So I could imagine a pickle shrinking and becoming smaller.
It is a handy method if used sparingly. But if the soundalike word is not obviously derived from the foreign word then the experience becomes a struggle. Or maybe several foreign words all match well with a soundalike image; and then that is confusing as well.