h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Putting a tune to something helps enormously!

Song lyrics are learnt very quickly, and remembered for years and years.
Phone numbers are remembered easier if they are said with a rhythm. If the rhythm is wrong, I can't remember.

I can also remember the wording of the notes on the back of the loo doors from when I was at school when I was 14 (18 years ago), because I used to hum it to myself. Well, there was nothing else to read!

I know the first few books of the new Testament to the tune of An English Country garden.

I still remember the colours of the rainbow by singing this rhyme -

'Red for the rainbow, orange too. Yellow says, "how do you do". Green is the next one, green for go. Then comes blue and indigo. Number seven, we must not forget, is pretty violet.'

I must have learnt that song when i was five years old, yet I still use it on a regular basis to remember the colours. None of that 'Richard of York' rubbish for me

Isn't there a song where all the elements of the periodic table are put to music? That sounds like quite a fun way of learning what is otherwise a very boring list of meaningless symbols.

Yes, "Elements" by Tom Lehrer, you can find the lyrics at:

http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/periodic/lyrics.html

but they're in no particular order and it doesn't strike me as a very useful way to learn them.

I'm never going to bother learning them anyway, so i think i'll just enjoy the song

I always remember how to spell the word 'Mississippi' by saying, almost singing, it in a very rhythmic way. If i didn't have the little rhythmic device, i wouldn't have a clue how to spell it.

Anybody who's read 'Matilda' by Roald Dahl should be able to spell 'difficulty' -

'Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI, Mrs CULTY'.

Again, this is said in a very rhythmic way, which makes it easy to remember.

Is that where it's from? My dad used to say this all the time when I was a kid, and I had no idea. Thanks.

I learnt it as Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI, Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY.

And I learnt it long before Roald Dahl wrote Matilda.

Roald Dahl must have borrowed it for one of his books then