Long numbers in German occur in many areas, such as telephone numbers, PINs, credit card numbers or important facts. With this practical and reliable method you can easily memorize long numbers permanently.
Some of our students here at GermanMind have difficulty remembering numbers permanently and reliably. Instead, they rely on their phone or a notebook. It is much safer and more reliable to have the most important numbers in your head.
How to remember German numbers
Here are two methods for remembering / remembering numbers from memory training.
1st method memory training: Remember numbers with pictures
Surely you know from television the method of replacing the single digits by pictures. For example, 1 becomes a candle, 2 becomes a swan, 3 becomes breasts, 7 becomes a dwarf (7 dwarfs) and 10 becomes a golf club with a ball.
The system is very simple. You replace the digits of a number, e.g. a PIN 1234, with the corresponding pictures. In this case: candle, swan, breasts, car (4 wheels) and then link these pictures to a story. A burning candle is blown out by a little swan, which then grows breasts and is almost run over by a car.
It's definitely not something you forget! The pitfalls of this system become clear as soon as you have to deal with longer sequences of numbers. Quickly one loses the overview, if with the number sequence 974532777635 the 7 appears four times (makes 4 x 7 dwarfs, so there are just 28 little men running around in your fantasy story). Then, even a concentrated person hits their limits!
2nd method memory training: Remembering numbers with words
Others said the same thing to themselves and looked for a method to convert numbers into concrete words or pictures.
The individual digits from 0 to 9 are replaced by fixed consonants. Vowels, H and Y are "fillers". The assignment looks as follows:
Suppose the number is the PIN number of your debit card. Now just imagine that you are standing there in rags because you can't remember the PIN number of your card. Or that all the LAMPS are flashing at the EC machine because you have forgotten the number!
Memory artists sometimes have mnemonic words for the first 1000 numbers, sometimes more! Another tip for the following problem: You know the principle of the Major Code, but you don't use it, because you just don't want to think of a suitable mnemonic? And you don't want to learn a 1000-digit table by heart, but would still like to use the system?
Some of the results are extremely funny and you can really have a lot of fun with it. By the way, this is also practical for memory trainers, because even when preparing mnemonic seminars you sometimes have problems finding funny and memorable examples. Try it out!
The Major System is only complicated at first sight - in the end you have a great mnemonic system at your disposal for a small effort (learning the assignment of 0-9)!
Enjoy your memory training with numbers!
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