Memorizing English Grammar

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.”)