Would a verbatum memorization script be useful in the DPR

Question

This article here: http://www.productivity501.com/how-to-memorize-verbatim-text/294/ gives a technique for memorizing verbatum text along with a script to generate the mnemonic device he recommends. Basically you make a version of the text you are trying to memorize that consists of only the first letters of each word. Here is a single page that just contains the script:

http://www.downes.ca/memorization.htm

As is, it doesn't work quite right for Pali because it doesn't recognize the special unicode letters. I modified the script on a local version by changing the main line of the script to ths:

var firstLetter = function(str){
return str.replace(/([a-zA-ZāīūṭḍṇṅñḷṁṃĀĪŪṬḌṆṄÑṀṂḶ])[a-zA-ZāīūṭḍṇṅñḷṁṃĀĪŪṬḌṆṄÑṀṂḶ]*/g,"$1");
}

This way it also leaves the verse numbers untouched if that matters to the person memorizing.

My thought was that it could easily be added to the converter in the DPR. And the question is, would it be useful?

Personally I've found it very helpful for memorizing.

 

 

Answer 1

It's a neat idea, thanks for suggesting it. But in memorizing Pali, there are other issues - declension plays a huge part, as do compounds. For example, the letters "a h" don't trigger "addhānamaggappaṭipanno hoti" in the same way as one would expect with English words.

Still, an interesting idea.

Comments

Yes, indeed it has limitations. And it is really only meant as a crutch bridging the gap between reading from the original text and having it completely memorized. Even in English it is possible to substitute a similar word if it starts with the same letter. And I just realized that the code as I have it above would not deal properly with words that begin with an aspirated first consonant. That would probably take more than just a simple regex expression.