They Call It Mellow Hielo (Part I)

I mentioned a while back how I had managed to learn Spanish words using a rather bizarre mnemonic system. A few of the examples had slipped my mind since I stopped using them a while back, but I was looking through an old notebook the other day and came across these ones, which I can assure you came in really handy.

Ice, Ice Baby

When water freezes it becomes ice, and if you go to Spanish lessons you will learn the word “hielo”. This is a simple sounding word but unless you play ice hockey or drink a lot of a straight whisky you probably won’t need to use it very much. To avoid it slipping my mind at crucial moments I related it to the English word “yellow”, which has a very similar sound. This, in turn, turned in the old song about “mellow yellow” in my befuddled mind. I then had an image of a block of yellow hielo which was rather mellow. A long way for a shortcut, as my mum would say.