Left to my own mnemonic devices

On Thursday, I reached a sort of milestone. In my Hebrew class that morning, I took my sixth and probably final vocabulary test. After going nearly a decade without one (I studied French in my sophomore year of high school), vocabulary tests suddenly became a big part of my life again this past July, when I began the summer Greek course at Luther Seminary. Since then, I've faced just shy of a dozen of these gauntlets between Greek and Hebrew. To celebrate this milestone, I figured I'd give the readers of this blog a peek at what it took me to learn the roughly 600 required words.

Memorization of this magnitude requires a good deal of mnemonic devices (the word "mnemonic," curiously enough, is akin to a Greek word for "memory"). I can't even imagine the multitude of these devices that Luther students have formulated over the years. I'm sure mine are not the best. In fact, I want to warn you: The revelations below will probably expose a very sick mind. I don't know how ridiculous these mnemonic devices are in comparison to those devised by other students. But based on the fact that Dr. Schifferdecker, my Hebrew instructor, took another faculty member's suggestion and offered my class a chance to perform any songs or other memorization tools in a format a la "The Gong Show," I'm guessing this sort of silliness isn't unique to me. Perhaps if you're a prospective student, the following will give you an idea of what you're in for.

Greek doesn't always demand a great deal of creativity, since many of its words are analogous to English words. It's not hard to remember that "kardia" means "heart" or that "baptiso" means "to baptize." Other words offer some coincidental clues. I apparently was not the only genius in my Greek class to remember that "pino" means "to drink" by thinking of the wine, pinot. I would doubt, however, that any of my classmates linked the word "palin" with "again" by imagining Baby Sinclair from the 1990s ABC series "Dinosaurs" yelling, "Palin!" in place of his recurring demand of "Again!" on the show. Wow. I am a dork.

Hebrew is a bit more difficult, not only because the alphabet letters don't look as similar to ours and because the words are read from right to left but also because very few words are recognizable to English-speakers. One odd one that I did recognize was "mayim," and I quickly realized that "Blossom" star Mayim Bialik's name means "water." I doubt that the devious video game character Baraka from "Mortal Kombat" was named after the Hebrew word "beracah" ("blessing") but that distinct similarity helped me remember that word. Again ... I am a dork.

My proudest mnemonic device works in two ways. I think of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to remember both the words nasah, meaning "to test" or "to try," and nasa, meaning "to lift" or "to carry." NASA invokes thoughts of rocket tests and, of course, "lift off." Alas, this is still not as clever as one tremendous clue often recommended by Luther's Hebrew teachers: The word "melek," meaning "king," has as its root consonants MLK, the initials of Martin Luther King Jr. I mean, dang, that's good.

I seem to employ the use of obscure celebrities (like Mayim Bialik) often when memorizing Hebrew words. It helped to remember that "katan" means "small" by thinking of diminutive "Saturday Night Live" performer Chris Kattan. Also, and this one's a stretch, I learned that "davar" means "word" or "thing," by rhyming it with the first name of LeVar Burton, who hosted the PBS kids' show "Reading Rainbow," which was about books, which are filled with words and things. My favorite mnemonic device is tied to my Green Bay Packers: I learned the word "amad" ("to stand") shortly after a typically miserable performance against the Philadelphia Eagles by cornerback Ahmad Carroll. The Packers cut Carroll the day after that game, but I'll always remember him standing around while an opposing wide receiver made a big touchdown play.

There are always risks of psychological damage with mnemonic devices like these, and this process may have cost me the happy image of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In a somewhat desperate moment, I connected "radaf" ("to pursue" or "to persecute") with Rudolph. I'm quite sure that at some point every Christmas for the rest of my life, I'll flash back to my image of a deranged Rudolph chasing and persecuting elves all over the North Pole.

Anybody out there have a vocabulary-memorization device weirder than mine? I dare you to reply. In fact, I beg you. I'd feel a lot better about myself.