The Problem

You want to memorize a list of vocabulary items.

This is both boring and hard, and it’s not how you learned English, so let’s use AI to make it fun and easy.

I was inspired in this experiment by a true mnemonic masterpiece I heard over a decade ago. “Luw Song” by Clint Kirby. Learning Greek verb endings has never been easier since this pioneering work. He doesn’t even pronounce the endings consistently, but that makes it all the more memorable and hysterical. Thank you Clint!

In this post, I’ll show you how to use AI to create a fun, musical mnemonic to memorize anything.

Prompting ChatGPT for musical mnemonic excellence

Okay let's make a dr seuss like zany story using the vocabulary items from this list. Make it rhyme where possible (the class will be singing it). It's good to make it odd, but let's try to have some kind of narrative coherence to it. Don't introduce a lot of extra content, and be sure to get the actual glosses in there from the vocab list (be specific). I know you can do this. 
 
Here's the list: [insert list of words here you want to memorize]
 
ἀποκρίνομαι, ἀπεκρινάμην​​​I answer
δεῖ (3rd pers. sg.; impf ἐδει)​​​It is necessary
δύναμαι, ἡδυνήθην (impf. ἐδυνάμην, ἠδυνάμην)​I am able, am powerful
ἔρχομαι, ἦλθον​​​​​I come, go
νύξ, νυκτός, ἡ​​​​​night
ὅστις, ἥτις, ὅτι​​​​​whoever, whichever, whatever
πορεύομαι, ἐπορεύθην​​​​I go, proceed; live
συνάγω, συνήγαγον​​​​I gather together, bring together; lead
τόπος, -ου, ὁ​​​​​place; location
ὡς​​​​​​as, like; that; approximately; when, after

The first result was just too long for me I thought. I thought repetition might be useful (though I’m not sure it’s better than long and story-like!), so I asked for a shorter version.

That's great. Let's make it much more compact. Go for concise, and go for accurate glosses (OTI means 'that' or 'because', so "Whatever—ὅτι—may come, we’re now bold and free," could be confusing), etc.

Great. I got this:

Got it! Here's a more concise and gloss-accurate version of the rhyming story:

The Night of the Wandering Νύξ

In a τόπος, a place, as the νύξ, night, fell,
I heard a voice answer, ἀποκρίνομαι, well.
"It is δεῖ, necessary," the voice said with cheer,
"To πορεύομαι, go, and leave without fear."

"I δύναμαι, I’m able!" I shouted, then ran,
And ἦλθον, I came, to a marvelous plan.
"Gather, συνάγω!" I called to the crowd,
And off we all went, so lively and loud.

"Whoever—ὅστις—goes will find something bright,
And as—ὡς—the stars, we’ll light up the night!"
So off we proceeded, our hearts burning strong,
In that τόπος of νύξ, where we all belong.

Now we need to get it into a song.

Since I had heard Suno was releasing its v4 model for usage, I thought I’d give it a shot. I only had the v3.5 model, but it worked well and was free.

In the lyrics field, I pasted the song lyrics above, but with one slight change: I didn’t want it to pronounce the Greek properly (we’re using Erasmian pronunciation, not Modern Greek). So I asked ChatGPT to transliterate the Greek terms into the closest Latin letters following the erasmian pronunciation. A couple tweaks later, I got this:

In a topos, a place, as the nux, night, fell,
I heard a voice answer, apokrinomai, well.
“It is ‘day’, necessary,” the voice said with cheer,
“To poru-oh-my, go, and leave without fear.”

“I dunamai, I’m able! I shouted, then ran,
And elthon, I came, to a marvelous plan.
“Gather, sunago!” I called to the crowd,
And off we all went, so lively and loud.

“Whoever—hostis—goes will find something bright,
And as—hoas—the stars, we’ll light up the night!”
So off we proceeded, our hearts burning strong,
In that topos of nux, where we all belong.

For the Style of Music field, I entered:

Anthem style. Wholesome. Clear vocals.

The title was “The Night of the Wandering Νύξ”.

I like the result. Here’s the link.

Going Multimodal

Then I thought, it’s really the blending of text and music that makes Clint’s song so effective. What if I could use images too?

Back to ChatGPT:

I want to generate some images to go along with this. Please describe the prompts we *would* use for each image (but don't create an image yet). Be sure to explicitly include the Greek vocab items and glosses that need to be in each image.

It gave me these prompts:

Here are the prompts for each image, ensuring the Greek vocab items and their glosses are explicitly included:

Image 1: “The Topos at Night”
A dark and mysterious place (“τόπος” with the gloss “place”) under a starry sky, with a glowing moon representing “νύξ” (night). In the foreground, a signpost reads “τόπος - place” and “νύξ - night” in Greek and English, while faint whispers seem to emanate from the darkness, symbolizing an answering voice.

Image 2: “The Command to Go”
A shimmering, ghostly figure speaking to a traveler, saying, “ἀποκρίνομαι - I answer” and “δεῖ - it is necessary.” The words are written in glowing letters in the air. The traveler looks determined, preparing to embark on a journey, holding a lantern to symbolize readiness.

Image 3: “I Am Able!”
The traveler stands tall and confident, shouting, “δύναμαι - I am able!” against a backdrop of winding paths. Greek and English versions of “δύναμαι - I am able” glow above the traveler, emphasizing their determination.

Image 4: “The Gathering Crowd”
The traveler is joined by a diverse group of companions, all smiling and excited as they prepare to journey together. Overhead, glowing text reads “συνάγω - I gather together.” A small sign nearby includes “τόπος - place” in Greek and English to remind viewers of the setting.

Image 5: “Whoever Dares”
A whimsical scene of the group walking under a glowing night sky filled with constellations forming the Greek word “ὅστις - whoever.” The companions’ faces are full of wonder, and a starry trail leads them forward. The words “ὅστις - whoever” and “ὡς - as, like” are floating in the sky, representing discovery and imagination.

Image 6: “The Journey’s End”
The companions stand together triumphantly on a hilltop, overlooking a radiant sunrise. The words “πορεύομαι - I go, proceed” and “ἦλθον - I came, I went” appear as banners in the scene, symbolizing the completion of their journey. The glowing night fades, but a signpost still shows “τόπος - place” and “νύξ - night” as a callback to where they started.

These prompts are designed to highlight the Greek vocabulary visually and conceptually, providing clear and memorable learning aids. Would you like to proceed with creating any of these?

Perfect. I asked it to generate the images one by one.

Since the text wasn’t amazing (in the future this part of the post will be completely irrelevant as text generation, even cross-linguistically, becomes perfect), I decided to use iMovie to stitch it all together.

Pasting the text into the “titles” in iMovie was annoying at first. I couldn’t ‘paste without styles’, so I wound up creating a Word doc, setting up the fonts, sizing, colours, etc., and then pasting from there.

Curious about the result? Here’s the final video, The Night of the Wandering Νύξ.

Here’s a link to the complete ChatGPT conversation.

Can’t wait to see what other make!