The Almosters

The skeptic has one shot left before he’s wiped out by the power of the method. He can, at this point, say, “Hold it! Every word you’ve used to demonstrate the system so far falls much too neatly into our lap – liar, mole-yay. It’s a setup. It’s not real. Very few words will cooperate with the system once you tackle the real world!”
And he’s right! The words we’ve been subjecting to the memory system so far are automatics. They fall right into your lap with self suggesting images. Only a small percentage of words will fall into the system as facilely as the automatics. More, many more than you imagine, will fit automatically into the system, but far from enough to conquer another language. Never mind! Behind the words that fit neatly into the system are many times that number of words that, while fitting nowhere nearly as neatly, can nonetheless take you so close to the target word that true memory can easily complete the job. We call those words almosters. Of our four groups – automatics, almosters, toughies, and impossibles – the almosters make up by far the single biggest category.
Let’s demonstrate.
The Chinese word for “lobster” is transliterated as low-shah, pronounced very much like LOAN-shark. If you imagine that lobster is so expensive you need a loan shark to negotiate a lobster lunch, true memory will easily putt you from loan-shark to low-shah.
Shrimp in Indonesian is gambiri, pronounced gam to rhyme with “Tom” followed by “beery” (gam-BI-ri). You complain to your waiter in Indonesia that the chewing gum he served you tastes awfully beery. He advises you it’s not chewing gum, it’s shrimp. Your putt will take you from GUM-beery to GAM-beery.
The Serbo-Croatian word for “spoon” is kasika, pronounced KASH (to rhyme with “gosh”)-ee-kah.
You want to get a spoon in Belgrade. They send you outside the hotel to a cash-and-carry to get a spoon if you want one.
Or if you’re familiar with the Eastern grain called kasha (buckwheat groats), you can imagine dipping you spoon into a bowl of kasha in the back seat of your car. True memory will carry you from kasha-car to KASH-ee-ka.
“Spoon,” then, equals KASH-ee-ka.
The Italian word for “day” is giorno, pronounced JUR (as in “jury”)-no. You’re eagerly awaiting the outcome of a legal action, but the jury has been tied up all day with no verdict. Even stronger would be the notion of eagerly awaiting the outcome of the trial and learning that the whole day went by without the jury even showing up! All day and jury no.
“Day” equals JUR-no.
“Humid” in Farsi is martoob, pronounced mar (as in “marshal”)-TOOB (as in “tube”). It’s so dry in Central Iran that in order to provide comfortable humidity in your room, the maritime authorities arranged to bring water in through a tube.
True memory will easily let you lop off all but the first syllable of “maritime” and change the vowel from the a as in “maritime” to a as in “marshal” so that humidity equals mar-TOOB.
“Banana” in Indonesian is pisang, pronounced PEA-song, the second syllable rhyming with the cong in “conga”. You’d long heard of jungle magic in the outer islands of Indonesia, but you never really believed it until you went to the local grocer looking
for bananas. You don’t see bananas anywhere. You ask if he has any bananas. Sure, he says, plenty. “Excuse me,” you say, “I don’t see any.” Be patient, he begs you, until he finishes with a customer.
When it’s your turn he asks you how many bananas you want. You reply, half a dozen. He then takes six peas and sings them a mysterious little song. Before your bewildered eyes, they turn into bananas! The peas that were sung to became bananas.
Your only putt is to make the final vowel sound like the o in “conga.”
So “banana” equals PEA-song.
The Spanish word for “to iron” is planchar, pronounced plan (to rhyme with “Don”)-CHAR (as in “charcoal”). The hotel in Madrid has an excellent reputation, with only a single and rather bizarre lapse. Apparently a maid with too much seniority to be fired has a habit of leaving the iron on the backside of the trousers so long it leaves burn marks the size of the iron itself smack across both buttocks.
You have no choice. Your pants need ironing and you’ve got to take your chances. To improve your odds you gingerly approach the concierge and say, “ Excuse me, sir. Could you please find out if the maid plans to iron these pants correctly or if she plans to char them?” Your putt is to carry the plan sound from one rhyming with “tan” over to one rhyming with “Don.”
“To iron” equals plan-CHAR.
The Indonesian word for “donkey” is keledai, pronounced almost exactly like “call it a day” without the it. That’s what donkeys in hot climates are reputed to want to do after carrying their loads, and that’s what we’ll do now with this particular series of examples.

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