Phone numbers, PIN codes, car numbers, dates of birth, historical dates. We all struggle with numbers, and the reason is simple. A number is abstract. You cannot see it. How do you picture the number 5? You only know that it is one less than 6 and one more than 4.
So the trick is to turn numbers into something you can see. The method for that is the phonetic system, and it is one of the most useful things I teach. It looks like a lot at first, but you need only about ten minutes a day, and the whole code has just ten sounds.
The ten sounds
Remember, we use sounds, not spellings. Each digit gets one sound, and each sound has a small reason to help you remember it.
- 1 is T or D. The letter t has one down stroke.
- 2 is N. The letter n has two down strokes.
- 3 is M. The letter m has three.
- 4 is R. The word four ends with an R sound.
- 5 is L. Hold up five fingers and the shape is an L. Also, L is fifty in Roman numbers.
- 6 is J, CH or SH. A capital J looks like a mirror image of 6.
- 7 is K, hard C or hard G. A capital K can be drawn with two sevens.
- 8 is F or V. A written f has two loops, like an 8.
- 9 is P or B. The number 9 turned around is a P.
- 0 is Z or S. Zero starts with a Z sound, and in Hindi it is shoonya, which starts with S.
Vowels, and the letters W, H and Y, have no value. They are only fillers that help you make words. Double letters count once, because they make one sound. Silent letters count for nothing. So motor is 314, paper is 994, belt is 951, butter is 914, and climb is 753, since the b is silent. Even my own name, Jayasimha, comes to 603.
Give every number a picture
For each digit, fix one word that holds only that sound. These are your pegs.
- 1 day
- 2 knee
- 3 ma
- 4 ray
- 5 law
- 6 jaw
- 7 key
- 8 fee
- 9 bee
- 10 dosa
For 3, picture your own mother. For 5, picture a policeman in uniform, because the police stand for the law. For 10, picture yourself eating dosa for breakfast. Two digit numbers work the same way. 94 is B and R, so bar. 32 is M and N, so man. 81 is F and T, so fat. 05 is S and L, so sail.
Remember a number with a story
Suppose the number is 94 32 81 05. Break it into pairs and the pairs become words: bar, man, fat, sail. Now make a picture. A man sits in a bar. He is very fat. He cannot get out, so he opens a big sail and floats away.
Say it back to yourself, word by word, and change each word to its sounds. Bar is 94. Man is 32. Fat is 81. Sail is 05. You have the number, and you did not memorise a single digit.
It works for dates too. Newton lived from 1642 to 1727. Break each year into two pairs. 16 is D and SH, so dish. 42 is R and N, so rain. 17 is D and hard G, so dog. 27 is N and K, so neck. See a dish being filled with rain when Newton is born, and a dog with a very long neck at the end of his life. Silly pictures, yes. They hold the dates.
It works in the other direction too
When you see a number on a vehicle plate, read it as sounds and see if it makes a word. When you see a word on a hoarding, turn it into digits. Do this a little every day, and in a few weeks it becomes second nature. You do not need to set aside special time for it.
If you forget the peg for a number, do not panic. Think of the sound that number carries and say any word you can think of that has only that consonant sound. When the right word comes, you will feel it ring a bell.
Where students can use it
Students use this system for formulae, atomic weights, square roots and cube roots. For example, the square root of 10 is 3.162. The peg for 10 is dosa, 3 is ma, and 162 gives you a word like touch-in. Put dosa, ma and touch-in in one funny picture, and the number is yours.
Start small. Learn the ten sounds first. Test yourself by saying the sound for a digit and the digit for a sound, in any order, until there is no hesitation.
This is one chapter from my book Train Your Brain.
