I was reading manga on pixiv and one of the characters used the verb “惚れる” and I instantly remembered what it meant. Weirdly the last time I remember hearing it was like a year ago and I hadn’t studied it or anything so how did I even remember????
That’s how it is for me also. I’d love for it to do that with every word I see but I really take it as “if it sticks then it’s probably important”
When it comes down to it, 仕方がない。
You can remember lots of things after only experiencing it once. You were doing something at the time — reading something on pixiv — so whatever you were doing provides you a lot of context that also works to jog your memory. When you’re sitting in a room studying a bunch of words, you’re in a bubble. There’s nothing to distinguish one word that you studied from another. But if you’re at the zoo you learn “spots” alongside the experience of seeing a real-life leopard. And you can remember it because when you need to recall it you think “I heard that word what was I doing? I was at the zoo and the kids were screaming “Spots! Spots!”‘
I’d risk to say that you were probably very focused in situation when you first heard/see that word (maybe it was some emotional scene?) , so you have managed to create very strong association and it worked. It is not uncommon to get a solution after takin a step back from the issue (longer break, sleep, gettin busy with other things etc.). Maybe it worked like that in your case too. Or maybe you are an elephant;p
Our brains are very complex, so it’s hard to predict how it’s going to react on tens of thousands of different words and situations. Usually we have a scale from memorizing some words from the first try to having problems with memorization even after 10+ repetitions.
My guess is that our experience can create such situation that for specific words it takes close to 0 efforts to learn, it’s very distinctive and at the same time we have a very strong reaction. For example, think about some book or cinema you have read/seen several or even more years ago, can you remember some scenes from it? We barely have read it once, but still retain some of that information even now. Similar thing happens with foreign vocabulary too. The opposite occurs too, sometimes we have so much problems to distinguish some word or set expression and it has so low impact on us, that we have problems with recalling even after a long period of time. More common for more complex expressions, that are naturally harder to memorize.
Thus we usually orient at some average number and at average for average person it takes 5-7 repetitions to be able to recall even after prolonged period of time. But on practice it’s more like 1-15 range, with majority in 3-9. Also a bit individual, I usually can memorize very fast, so even 2-4 repetitions is enough for me, but after 20-30 words I’m so exhausted that I can’t memorize even a single additional word (and get headache). Like a glass cannon. Amount of words we can memorize daily is also individual and people who can learn N1 in 1-2 years is a good example, because in their case they usually learn 50 or even more words in a day.
I’m going with you just fell in love with that one and thats why it stuck.
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That’s how it is for me also. I’d love for it to do that with every word I see but I really take it as “if it sticks then it’s probably important”
When it comes down to it, 仕方がない。
You can remember lots of things after only experiencing it once. You were doing something at the time — reading something on pixiv — so whatever you were doing provides you a lot of context that also works to jog your memory. When you’re sitting in a room studying a bunch of words, you’re in a bubble. There’s nothing to distinguish one word that you studied from another. But if you’re at the zoo you learn “spots” alongside the experience of seeing a real-life leopard. And you can remember it because when you need to recall it you think “I heard that word what was I doing? I was at the zoo and the kids were screaming “Spots! Spots!”‘
I’d risk to say that you were probably very focused in situation when you first heard/see that word (maybe it was some emotional scene?) , so you have managed to create very strong association and it worked. It is not uncommon to get a solution after takin a step back from the issue (longer break, sleep, gettin busy with other things etc.). Maybe it worked like that in your case too. Or maybe you are an elephant;p
Our brains are very complex, so it’s hard to predict how it’s going to react on tens of thousands of different words and situations. Usually we have a scale from memorizing some words from the first try to having problems with memorization even after 10+ repetitions.
My guess is that our experience can create such situation that for specific words it takes close to 0 efforts to learn, it’s very distinctive and at the same time we have a very strong reaction. For example, think about some book or cinema you have read/seen several or even more years ago, can you remember some scenes from it? We barely have read it once, but still retain some of that information even now. Similar thing happens with foreign vocabulary too. The opposite occurs too, sometimes we have so much problems to distinguish some word or set expression and it has so low impact on us, that we have problems with recalling even after a long period of time. More common for more complex expressions, that are naturally harder to memorize.
Thus we usually orient at some average number and at average for average person it takes 5-7 repetitions to be able to recall even after prolonged period of time. But on practice it’s more like 1-15 range, with majority in 3-9. Also a bit individual, I usually can memorize very fast, so even 2-4 repetitions is enough for me, but after 20-30 words I’m so exhausted that I can’t memorize even a single additional word (and get headache). Like a glass cannon. Amount of words we can memorize daily is also individual and people who can learn N1 in 1-2 years is a good example, because in their case they usually learn 50 or even more words in a day.
I’m going with you just fell in love with that one and thats why it stuck.