Do you think it is impossible to memorize the English Dictionary in a Year? And then the Spanish Dictionary in another year?
ENGLISH DISCUSSION
Do you think it is impossible to memorize the English Dictionary in a Year? And then the Spanish Dictionary in another year?
I can tell you right now, it is not impossible! I met a man whom my parents are friends with and rather fond of. He memorized both the English and Spanish dictionaries in 2yrs.
He makes a living playing online poker and he spends his days reading dictionaries. He is working on his third one at the moment: French.
14 Answers
Absolutely possible. I'm starting today.
Photographic memory might enable someone (very few) to memorize a dictionary. The question is which one? (a little pocket one or one that weighs several kilograms) And why? And how would it help speak or understand a language?
Further just knowing what an English word is in Spanish does not mean you know how and when to use it.
For the average person, no. For a savant yes. One quite intelligent fellow learnt the Finnish language (supposedly one of the hardest) by reading their dictionary. He accomplished this in......
A WEEK!!!!
Anything is possible, but to just memorize something like a dictionary, with no context, no interaction, no practice etc., etc., how long will it stick?? That is the question - I don't believe it will stick unless you're a human computer.
Absolutely not. The human brain can contain approximately 10,000 words at any one time. The English language has over 1,000,000 words (including scientific words) and there isn't a single major dictionary that contains less than 450,000 words. Even though the Spanish language has approximately half as many words as English, it would still be impossible to memorize an entire major Spanish dictionary.
Since we are talking about Savants, there are also Music Savants. These are usually people who are blind, and the part of their brain which is supposed to be used for vision, instead becomes used for music. They can play 2 pianos simultaneosly, one with each hand perfectly. They will never ever make a mistake and remember every piece they ever played. No none savant could ever be as good as them and even the top musicians can not compete. Unfortunately since they are savants they have immense troubles with tasks such as eating and even communicating so its difficult to find out the secret behind their genius. And remember- they are blind
The best of all of these is perhaps Derek Paravicini.
Not in a year with the full version of the Oxford English Dictionary
But can he put a sentence together in the proper context?
As hitchens mentioned, there are those called savants or idiot savants, who can do exceptional things. There was once a Tom Cruise movie entitled "Rainman". His brother there, played by Dustin Hoffman, is an idiot savant.
That was based on the real life Kim Peeks. This guy could read one page of a book with one eye, and the other with the other eye, taking him 3 seconds to read 2 pages. He remembered everything he ever heard, saw, did, and on what day. He remembered what the weather had been like every single day, and if you told him your birthday, he would work out what day of the week you were born on. Instantly
But Kim Peek (rain man) was a savant who suffered a lot and was incapable of using language properly. He was just able to tell you facts.
The savants i was reffering to, were less full of facts than Mr Peeks was, but far better off and would be able to learn and speak languages.
I would think a very small number of people could accomplish that.
I doubt you could really learn a language that way, though it would be a tremendous help. However, if you have the mental capacity to memorise a dictionary, you should be able to learn almost anything you choose.
Personally, I can't remember where we keep the dictionary !
When I was in the second year of medical school and were tested every Saturday we joked about memorizing the Manhattan phone book.It would have been better if we were savants.
Yes, I believe it is. Jerry Lucas (ex-basketball player) memorized the Manhattan telephone directory, and he's no savant. He has a series of systems for memorizing things, and he wrote a book with Harry Lorayne, who is also an expert at memorization, called, "The Memory Book". I've read it and use some of the techniques, though I've never bothered to memorize telephone directories or dictionaries. I highly recommend the book, though.
The gist of it is that you don't memorize a whole bunch of things, you only memorize two things at a time, with a link to tie them together. Then you link the 2nd thing to the 3rd thing, then the 3rd thing to the 4th thing, and it can go on indefinitely. I used to do a card trick where I'd have someone shuffle a deck of cards, show me the cards in order, then hide the cards. I could tell them the order of cards all the way through the deck. I could also guess someone's card if I had them pick a card and put it back in the deck, because it would be out of order. It's a simple trick, once you learn it and practice a bit.
I personally could see little point in being able to remember all that information because you would need the intelligence to know how to apply that knowledge to benefit others and help yourself.
Additionally, as far as it applies and extends to learning languages, I have found that while it takes a few minutes to look up a word that you don't know or have forgotten, in a dictionary, it can take months and even years to learn how to use verbs correctly which are the invaluable building blocks of any language... so, from experience, I would rather have memorised irregular verbs and idiomatic expressions (modismos) than the contents of any dictionary in the world.
