Memorizing English Grammar
1-minute read • Updated on
Here’s a quick example of how I’m applying my phonetic system towards memorizing things in daily life.
I’ve been reading up on grammar, because I write a lot but have forgotten a lot of grammar rules. One thing that was still causing problems for me was lie, lay, lain, laid, lying, and laying.
The rules are:
- lie lay lain – this means to recline.
- lay laid laid — this means to place an object somewhere
All of these words perfectly fit my phonetic system, so they are easy to memorize:
- lie –> 55 –> Airplane
- lay –> 58 –> Wolf
- lain –> 582 –> Lois Lane
I strung those images together into a story that involves reclining.
The other three became an image of a wolf that laid a lei on a mirror:
- lay –> 58 –> Wolf
- laid –> 8♦ K♥ –> no image yet, but I use “lei’d” – from the tourist T-shirts that say “I got lei’d in Hawaii”
- laid –> I use an image of a mirror (image modifier) to indicate a double image.
The gerund is phonetically the same as the present tenses:
- lie -> lying (“I’m lying down.”)
- lay -> laying (“I’m laying the sheet on the bed.”)
