Thirty Days Hath September…

September 30, 2013

• Effective Revision

Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November.

All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone,

And that has twenty-eight days clear, And twenty-nine in each leap year!

Thirty days hath September is a traditional English mnemonic rhyme to help people remember the lengths of every month.

A mnemonic (remember the first “m” of the word is silent!), or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids information retention. Mnemonics aim to translate information into a form that the human brain can retain better than its original form. Even the process of merely learning this conversion might already aid in the transfer of information to long-term memory. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often used for lists and in auditory form, such as short poems, acronyms, or memorable phrases.

Their use is based on the observation that the human mind remembers ‘relatable’ information more easily rather than more abstract or impersonal forms of information.

The word mnemonic is derived from the Ancient Greek word mnēmonikos meaning “of memory” and is related to Mnemosyne, the name of the goddess of memory, in Greek mythology. Ancient Greeks and Romans distinguished between two types of memory: the ‘natural’ memory and the ‘artificial’ memory. The former is inborn; it is the one that everyone uses automatically and without thinking. The artificial memory in contrast has to be trained and developed through the learning and practicing of a variety of mnemonic techniques.

Mnemonic systems are special techniques or strategies consciously used to improve memory, it helps employ information already stored in long-term memory to make memorisation an easier task. Do you have any mnemonics that you would like to share with us to help everyone remember things??! We would love to hear them at Kings Tutors….