The major system (also called the phonetic number system, phonetic mnemonic system, or Herigone's mnemonic system) is a

mnemonic A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...

technique used to aid in memorizing numbers. The system works by converting numbers into

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

s, then into words by adding

vowels A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

. The system works on the principle that images can be remembered more easily than numbers. One notable explanation of this system was given in

Martin Gardner Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of Lewis ...

's book ''The First Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions'' (just ''Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions'' in the UK edition), which has since been republished in ''The New Martin Gardner Mathematical Library'' as ''Hexaflexagons, Probability Paradoxes, and the Tower of Hanoi''. In this, Gardner traces the history of the system back to

Pierre Hérigone Pierre Hérigone (Latinized as Petrus Herigonius) (1580–1643) was a French mathematician and astronomer. Of Basque origin, Hérigone taught in Paris for most of his life. Works Only one work by Hérigone is known to exist: ''Cursus mathematicu ...

and

Richard Grey Sir Richard Grey (1457 – 25 June 1483) was an English knight and the half-brother of King Edward V of England. Early life Richard Grey was the younger son of Sir John Grey of Groby and Elizabeth Woodville. Richard was a 3-year-old child whe ...

with uses by

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...

and

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...

The system

Each numeral is associated with one or more consonants. (In other words, the link is to the sound, not the letter. For example, the letters C in "cat", "Cynthia", and "cello" each have different values in the system – 7, 0, and 6, respectively.) Vowels,

semivowels In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the c ...

and the consonant /h/ are ignored. These can be used as "fillers" to make sensible words from the resulting consonant sequences. A standard mapping is: The groups of similar sounds and the rules for applying the mappings are almost always fixed, but other hooks and mappings can be used as long as the person using the system can remember them and apply them consistently. Each numeral maps to a set of similar sounds with similar mouth and tongue positions. The link is

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

, that is to say, it is the consonant sounds that matter, not the spelling. Therefore, a word like ''action'' would encode the number ''762'' (/k/-/ʃ/-/n/), not ''712'' (''k''-''t''-''n''). Double letters are disregarded when not pronounced separately, e.g. ''muddy'' encodes ''31'' (/m/-/d/), not ''311'', but ''midday'' encodes ''311'' (/m/-/d/-/d/) while ''accept'' encodes ''7091'' (/k/-/s/-/p/-/t/) since the ''d''s and ''c''s are pronounced separately. ''x'' encodes ''70'' when pronounced as /ks/ or /gz/ (e.g. in ''fax'' and ''exam'') and ''76'' when pronounced /kʃ/ or /gʒ/ (e.g. in ''anxious'' or ''luxury''); ''z'' encodes ''10'' when pronounced /ts/ (e.g. in ''pizza''). In ''ghost'' (''701'', /ɡ/-/s/-/t/) and ''enough'' (''28'', /n/-/f/), ''gh'' is being encoded by different numerals. Usually, a

rhotic accent Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic varieti ...

is assumed, e.g. ''fear'' would encode ''84'' (/f/-/r/) rather than ''8'' (/f/). Often the mapping is compact. ''Hindquarters'', for example, translates unambiguously to ''2174140'' (/n/-/d/-/k/-/r/-/t/-/r/-/z/), which amounts to a twelve-letter word encoded by seven digits in seven letters, and can be easily visualized. Each numeral maps to a set of similar sounds with similar mouth and tongue positions. For most people it would be easier to remember ''3.1415927'' (an approximation of the mathematical constant pi) as: : ''meteor'' (''314'', /m/-/t/-/r/) : ''tail'' (''15'', /t/-/l/) : ''pink'' (''927'', /p/-/ŋ/-/k/, and taking /ŋ/ to be ''2'') Short term visual memory of imagined scenes allows large numbers of digits to be memorized with ease. Longer-term memory may require the formulation of more object-related mnemonics with greater logical connection, perhaps forming grammatical sentences that apply to the matter rather than just strings of images. The system can be employed with phone numbers. One would typically make up multiple words, preferably a sentence, or an ordered sequence of images featuring the owner of the number. The Major System can be combined with a peg system for remembering lists, and is sometimes used also as a method of generating the pegs. It can also be combined with other memory techniques such as rhyming, substitute words, or the

method of loci The method of loci is a strategy for memory enhancement, which uses visualizations of familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, journey m ...

. Repetition and concentration using the ordinary memory is still required. An advantage of the major system is that it is possible to use a computer to automatically translate the number into a set of words. One can then pick the best of several alternatives. Such programs include "Numzi" "Rememberg" "Fonbee", the

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

"2Know", and the website "pinfruit".

Example words

Some of these example words may belong to more than one word category. * Assumes a

* ''nanny'' (verb): to be overprotective towards * ''mum'' (adjective): silent; not saying a word * ''agape'' (adjective): with the mouth wide open, as in wonder, surprise, or eagerness * ''fife'' (noun): a high-pitched transverse flute used commonly in military and marching musical groups * ''viva'' (verb): to examine orally * ''fob'' (verb), archaic: to cheat; deceive

History

A different memory system, the

, was taught to schoolchildren for centuries, at least until 1584, "when

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...

reformers declared it unholy for encouraging bizarre and irreverent images." The same objection can be made over the major system, with or without the method of loci. Mental images may be easier to remember if they are insulting, violent, or obscene (see

Von Restorff effect The Von Restorff effect, also known as the "isolation effect", predicts that when multiple homogeneous stimuli are presented, the stimulus that differs from the rest is more likely to be remembered. The theory was coined by German psychiatrist and p ...

(1580–1643) devised the earliest version of the major system. The system was further developed by

Stanislaus Mink von Wennsshein Johann Just Winckelmann (19 August 1620 – 3 July 1699) was a German writer and historian. Under his pseudonym Stanislaus Mink von Wennsshein (also Wenusheim, Winusheim) he is known for having introduced a mnemonic system, the Major System (al ...

in the 17th century. It was later elaborated upon by other users. In 1730,

set forth a complicated system that used both consonants and vowels to represent the digits. In 1808

Gregor von Feinaigle Gregor von Feinaigle (22 August 1760 – 27 December 1819) was a German mnemonist and Roman Catholic monk. Life Feinaigle was born in Ueberlingen on 22 August 1760. Very little other is known of his early life except that he entered the Cister ...

introduced the improvement of representing the digits by consonants (but reversed the values of 8 and 9 compared to those listed above). In 1825

Aimé Paris Aimé Paris (1798–1866) was a French scholar. He was the developer of a method of stenography, and co-developer and propagator of what became the Galin-Paris-Chevé system of music notation. Paris studied mathematics and law, and became a lawye ...

published the first known version of the major system in its modern form. In 1843,

Carl Otto Reventlow Carl Otto Reventlow (actually ''Karl arlChristian Otto''; born 1817 in Store Heddinge (Denmark); died in 1873) became notable as the developer of a mnemonic system. He took the ''nom de plume'' Reventlow to distinguish himself from journalists with ...

(1817-1873) published a mnemonics textbook on a method similar to Paris' and traveled throughout Germany promoting it. In 1844 Francis Fauvel Gouraud (1808-1847) delivered a series of lectures introducing his mnemonic system which was based on Aimé Paris' version. The lectures drew some of the largest crowds ever assembled to hear lectures of a "scientific" nature up to that time. This series of lectures was later published as ''Phreno-Mnemotechny or The Art of Memory'' in 1845 and his system received wide acclaim. According to Gouraud,

indicated that a discussion on Hebrew linguistics in

William Beveridge William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron Beveridge, (5 March 1879 – 16 March 1963) was a British economist and Liberal politician who was a progressive and social reformer who played a central role in designing the British welfare state. His 194 ...

's ''Institutionum chronotogicarum libri duo, una cum totidem arithmetices chronologicæ libellis'' (London, 1669) inspired him to create his system of mnemotechniques which later evolved in to the major system. In the 1880s Marcus Dwight Larrowe, alias Silas Holmes, was teaching memory courses in the United States based on the Major System using a third alias Dr. Antoine Loisette. Because he was charging inordinate sums of money for a system which had obviously existed before, George S. Fellows published ''"Loisette" exposed'' (1888) and included all the material of Larrowe's course which he determined not to be under copyright. The incident was notable enough to gain coverage by way of a book review in the journal ''Science''. A well-known student of Loisette's included

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...

whose endorsement Loisette used regularly to sell his course. Following the revelation that he had not originated the system, Larrowe self-published his material under the pseudonym Dr. Antoine Loisette in 1895 and 1896 and it was later re-published by

Funk & Wagnalls Funk & Wagnalls was an American publisher known for its reference works, including ''A Standard Dictionary of the English Language'' (1st ed. 1893–5), and the ''Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia'' (25 volumes, 1st ed. 1912).Funk & Wagnalls N ...

in 1899. In the late 1800s Christof Ludwig Poehlmann (aka Christopher Louis Pelman), a German who had emigrated to the United States, and William Joseph Ennever created and ran a series of booklets and memory courses using the system which resulted in The Pelman Schools, The Pelman Institute, and were generally known as Pelmanism. Poehlmann eventually moved back to Germany around 1910 where he continued offering his memory courses and training apparently with a focus on language learning. indicated that he studied under him for a year in 1911. Fürst later practiced criminal law in Frankfort in pre-Hitler Germany before fleeing, as a Jew, to Prague where he taught at

Masaryk University Masaryk University (MU) ( cs, Masarykova univerzita; la, Universitas Masarykiana Brunensis) is the second largest university in the Czech Republic, a member of the Compostela Group and the Utrecht Network. Founded in 1919 in Brno as the seco ...

until emigrating to New York in 1939. In 1939, Fürst published ''Use your Head'' followed by ''How to Remember'' (1944), which was later reprinted as ''The Practical Way to Better Memory'', and followed up with a series of 12 booklets entitled ''You Can Remember! A Home Study Course in Memory and Concentration'' (1946) which all extolled the system, which he called the "Basic List" and the "Number System" along with other mnemonic systems. In a 1946 profile in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', Bruno indicates that German scholar Conradus Celtes originated the system. The system described in this article would be re-popularized after 1957 and through the 1980s in several books by

Harry Lorayne Harry Lorayne (born 4 May 1926) is an American magician and a memory-training specialist and writer who was called "The Yoda of Memory Training" and "The World's Foremost Memory-Training Specialist" by ''Time'' magazine. He is well known for his ...

, a magician and best selling contemporary author on memory. The most popular of the titles featuring the system is ''The Memory Book: The Classic Guide to Improving Your Memory at Work, at School, and at Play'' (1974, with Jerry Lucas). This phonetic system had another resurgence in the 1990s thanks to the late night infomercials of

Kevin Trudeau Kevin Trudeau (; born ) is an American author, salesman, and convicted fraudster known for promotion of his books and resulting legal cases involving the US Federal Trade Commission. His ubiquitous late-night infomercials, which promoted unsub ...

who sold a series of tapes called Mega Memory. He also published a similar book ''Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory'' which used this same system with some slight modifications. The name "Major System" may refer to Major Bartlomiej Beniowski, who published a version of the system in his book, ''The Anti-Absurd or Phrenotypic English Pronouncing and Orthographical Dictionary''. There is a reasonable historical possibility that the roots of the Major System are entangled with older systems of

shorthand Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''ste ...

. It is certainly the case that the underlying structure of the Major System has a direct overlap with

Gregg shorthand Gregg shorthand is a form of shorthand that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Like cursive longhand, it is completely based on elliptical figures and lines that bisect them. Gregg shorthand is the most popular form of pen stenography in ...

, which was a popular shorthand system in the late 1800s and early 1900s.The Mnemonic Major System and Gregg Shorthand Have the Same Underlying Structure
/ref> Phonetic number memorization systems also occur in other parts of the world, such as the

Katapayadi system ''Kaṭapayādi'' system (Devanagari: कटपयादि, also known as ''Paralppēru'', Malayalam: :ml:പരല്‍പ്പേര്, പരല്‍പ്പേര്) of numerical notation is an ancient Indian alphasyllabic numeral s ...

going back to at least the 7th Century in India.

Practice

Memory feats centered around numbers can be performed by experts who have learned a 'vocabulary' of at least one image for each 1 and 2-digit number, as these can then be combined to form narratives. Learning a vocabulary of 3-digit numbers is harder, because ten times more images need to be learned for each extra digit. Many mnemonists, however, can use a set of over 1000 images. The combination of images into a narrative is easier to do rapidly than forming a coherent grammatical sentence. This pre-memorisation and practice at forming images reduces the time required to think up a good imaginary object while creating a strong memorable impression of it. The best words for this purpose are usually nouns, especially those for distinctive objects such as those which make strong impressions on a variety of senses (e.g. "Lime" for 53, as its taste, smell, colour, and even texture are distinctive) or which move (e.g. "arrow" for 4). For basic proficiency, a large vocabulary of image words isn't really necessary, since when the table above is reliably learned, it is easy to form your own words ad hoc.

Indexing sequences

Mnemonics often center around learning a complete sequence where all objects in that sequence that come before the one you are trying to recall must be recalled first. For instance, using the mnemonic "Richard of York gave battle in vain" to learn the colours of the rainbow; (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) to remember what colour comes after indigo, one would have to recall the whole sequence. For a short sequence this may be trivial; for longer lists, it can become complicated and error-prone. A good example would be in recalling the 53rd element of the

periodic table The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the (chemical) elements, is a rows and columns arrangement of the chemical elements. It is widely used in chemistry, physics, and other sciences, and is generally seen as an icon of ch ...

. It might be possible for some people to construct and then learn a string of 53 or more items which you have substituted for the elements and then to recall them one by one, counting them off as you go, but it would be a great deal easier and less laborious/tedious to directly associate element 53 with, for example, a lime (a suitable mnemonic for 53) recalling some prior imagining of yours regarding a mishap where lime juice gets into one's eye - "eye" sounding like "I", the symbol for ''

Iodine Iodine is a chemical element with the symbol I and atomic number 53. The heaviest of the stable halogens, it exists as a semi-lustrous, non-metallic solid at standard conditions that melts to form a deep violet liquid at , and boils to a vi ...

''. This allows for

random access Random access (more precisely and more generally called direct access) is the ability to access an arbitrary element of a sequence in equal time or any datum from a population of addressable elements roughly as easily and efficiently as any othe ...

directly to the item, without the need for recalling any previous items. If you were remembering element 54 in the process of recalling the periodic table you could then recall an image for 54, for instance thinking of a friend called "Laura" (54) in the lotus position looking very Zen-like in order to remind yourself that element 54 is ''

Xenon Xenon is a chemical element with the symbol Xe and atomic number 54. It is a dense, colorless, odorless noble gas found in Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts. Although generally unreactive, it can undergo a few chemical reactions such as the ...

''. This is an example of combining the Major System with the peg system.

References

*Gouraud, Francis Fauve
Phreno-Mnemotechny or The Art of Memory
Wiley & Putnam 1845 *Lorayne, Harry and Lucas, Jerry, ''The Memory Book: The Classic Guide to Improving Your Memory at Work, at School, at Play'' Ballantine Books; Reissue edition (1996) .

Totally dedicated to the Major System.
University of Amsterdam - Online Memory Improvement Course
is an online step-by-step tutorial of the Phonetic Mnemonic System

External links

Software

iOS app
to learn and practice the major system
Numzi
- free web application for converting numbers to words/phrases and vice versa using the Major System. Covers the English language with over 220,000 words.
Numzi also has an iOS app
which is a portable Major System number-word converter.
2Know
is free Windows software for converting numbers to words (English, German, French).
Mnemisis
Another free mnemonic program - runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows
Memagine
iPhone app that uses the system to teach how to recall a list of up to 100 items in any order
Major System
iPhone app that helps you to create your own list of words and practice it
pinfruit.com
Web application for the mnemonic major system
Major System Trainer
Free personalisable web application for learning the digit mappings, and encodings for all 1 and 2 digit words
Major System Tool
Free web application for converting numbers to words using Derren Brown's encoding.
Mnemonic Major System Module
A free module for the drupal content management system by rolf vreijdenberger - web based
dingn.com
Training and recall of 1 digit to 4 digits numbers, vocabulary cards and a deck of shuffled playing cards with personalized favorite word selection for each number.

A quiz to learn the sound/number correspondences of the Major system by rote. Also available are quizzes to learn the top 10

an

representations from 00 to 99.

Other

Online mnemonic directory for remembering numbers with the major system

MEMORIAD - Official Website of World Memory Olympiad

Homepage of World Memory ChampionshipsNumzi Peg Words
for 0 - 100, with Peg Word Story
Andi Bell's system for the decimal numbers 00-99Collection of Mnemonic Devices
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mnemonic Major System Mnemonics