One of the solutions to this involves making sure that the images we create are large, vibrant and filled with zany action. This helps to reduce the intellectual and conceptual element of mnemonic practice and increase the “impressions.” I’ve personally struggled with this element and found that spending time drawing every day and more time looking at art and being self-conscious about the presentation of iconic imagery in cinema has made me much more visual and able to create snappy impressions in my memory work that do not become overly complex.

With greater experience, however, complex images can serve important functions, such as when memorizing foreign language poetry, lyrics and phrases.

But it all comes back to how the mnemonics are being used and how the different elements are practiced. I believe that, as in poetry and art, simplicity comes through experience. The best part about using mnemonics with language learning is that you get to become a better memorizer as you become better at the language, which is why I closed the article with the suggestion that mnemonics-assisted language learning is essentially a perfect circle.

On a side note, you mentioned that this is a great strategy for beginning learners. I agree with this in principle, but it can also be useful for advanced learners who just cannot, for whatever reason, remember that one particular word. I would also caution that sometimes the associations can become so complex that learners (incorrectly) memorize some part of the association instead of the actual vocabulary word. I know I’ve been guilty of this.

I would not say that your concerns are baseless. However, personal experimenting and experience with the methods I propose will undoubtedly prove to you that mental clutter is not a nasty side effect. In fact, when practiced in the best possible manner, it’s a clean and efficient path to the words you want to memorize. The trick is to create the images in a state of relaxation and really focus on the vibrancy and colors and sizes, taking care to exaggerate these and vivify the action. The clarity comes from the imaginative invigoration, and done well, you’ll often find that you breeze over the image to get to the word, and often don’t need the images at all. This is because mnemonics are a means of paying attention to the words and phrases in completely different ways, giving your mind several different ways to revisit them (locations plus images) rather than just blunt-force rote learning. Again, personal experimentation, practice and the spirit of play will get you results.

As I point out in the final paragraph of my post above, it’s important to understand that the examples I’ve given here are representative examples only. The examples I give may well work for you, but the real power comes from creating your own. It’s a point of controversy in the world of mnemonics that I’ve written about a few times, so feel free to search my name along with the phrase “why mnemonic examples rarely work.” I’m a pretty no-nonsense thinker when it comes to mnemonics, so do be sure to invent your own images if you want to use mnemonics to memorize foreign language vocabulary and take any and all descriptions you read as guidelines and inspiration for creating your own.

In addition, it’s important to realize that we are not always shooting for a one-to-one correspondence in our mnemonic images. You’re right that zoo + g doesn’t sound exactly like “Zug” in German, but for people struggling to remember words through traditional methods like rote learning, the image is enough to trigger the word and point them in the right direction. One could create a pronunciation mnemonic in addition, and that is certainly an option, but if you’re standing in Germany or Switzerland or Austria (all of which have slight pronunciation variations and several of them within different regions of each country), I’d rather that people can at least say “zoog” when they want to ask about the train, a pronunciation that virtually every German speaker will instantly understand. (They’ll also likely be touched and doubly helpful that the person is trying to communicate in their language).

Additionally, the one-to-one correspondence issue is minor given that one still needs to rehearse the words by speaking them in order to train the muscle memory of the mouth. What we are looking for in mnemonics are triggers that bring back the words in ways that are easily created, super-effective, elegant and fun.

And if you have any more doubts about the methods I teach, there’s a wonderful article you can read by someone who memorized 200 words in just 10 days. She gives a very balanced view of the challenges and benefits she experienced in an article that is enlightening, elucidating and deeply inspiring:

http://anthroyogini.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/learning-an-aboriginal-language-a-quick-dirty-guide-to-learning-vocabulary/

There are truly no magic bullets here, but if there is magic in the world of language learning, mnemonics are the closest thing to it.

It’s just I don’t quite understand some of your ideas, so I’ll try to ask.

“Zug” does not sound anything like “zoo” with a ‘g’ attached to it to me. But even if we agree on that, what does the train have to do with gorillas? I’m just afraid that if I start memorising all those crazy stories (the crazier, the better, they say), I will just waste considerable amount of memory for useless data which does not have any real connection with what I wanted to memorise in the first place. Ok, that probably works for 1 word only, but after I memorised 1000 words, I’m afraid that all those gorillas in my head will just start eating my brains. Or is this only an baseless fear, what do you think?

The next level is to use Memory Palace journeys to store large numbers of words. It’s pretty easy to get started using your home or the place you work. You can also use your favorite movie theatre, library, etc. but locations with rooms tends to work the best. You can use the four corners of a room, for example, and place one word in each corner by creating a dynamic image or short, image-based vignette.

Now, imagine if you had one Memory Palace for each letter of the alphabet. It takes a bit of setup, a process I describe in full in other writing in books and on my website, but the essentials are to spend between 2-5 hours creating a network of Memory Palaces and then populating these with vocabulary. It’s possible to experience massive boosts in vocabulary (which greatly impacts fluency) using such a technique in a very short period of time.

I find it especially helpful both at a beginner level and also for words that I’m having trouble remembering (at any level). I’ve noticed amazing results with the latter. Words that have been plaguing me suddenly become easy to recall when you have an image and association to bring to mind.