Learn Khmer Script the Lazy-Ass Way: Part Two: The Vowels

 

Photo by Holger Wirth

After long delay (sorry) here is Part 2 of my system for learning the Khmer script. Part 1 was the consonants. Part 2 is vowels. 

Disclaimer. You should be using other materials and methods to study Khmer if you want to make use of this system. The system itself is only a memorization aid. I am assuming you have some basic familiarity with the script.

One of the issues noted with Khmer consonants is that they come in two families. The "A"-series has an inherent "A" vowel; whereas the "O" series has an inherent "O" vowel. This means that if you write just a consonant by itself--no vowel--it will be pronounced with either an "A" sound or an "O" sound, depending on which series it belongs to.

However... the Khmer script also has plenty of vowel symbols as well. Depending how you count them, individual symbols can be combined to make new compound symbols with new pronunciations. In English, for example, we could consider "ea" to be a new vowel formed by combining "e" and "a", so that beat is pronounced differently from both bet and bat.

And moreover, each vowel symbol, whether individual or combined, has two pronunciations, depending on whether the attached consonant is "A" series or "O" series.

Interesting fact about Khmer script: the vowel sound following the consonant might be written to the left, right, above, or below the consonant. Sometimes on several sides at once. Examples;

ជា is the consonant ជ followed by the vowel ា. The dotted circle is something you never see in actual Khmer, and you never see this vowel standing alone either. The circle indicates that the vowel needs a consonant to the left of it.

ពី is the consonant ព followed by the vowel ី. This time the circle shows that the consonant goes under the vowel.

នៅ is the consonant ន followed by the vowel ៅ. The circle shows that the vowel is written on both sides of the consonant.

So to help me remember the pronunciations of the vowels, I needed names which would represent both the "A"-series pronunciation and the "B"-series pronunciation. (Some exceptions are noted below.) 

Each name encodes the pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). I can't give a complete breakdown of every IPA symbol, especially as it applies to Khmer pronunciation, but I'll try to provide a few pointers. 

The important letters of each vowel name are capitalized. To find an appropriate English word containing a given combination of letters required me to reach for some pretty exotic vocabulary. Look them up.

So we start. All in all, there are thirty-seven different vowel symbols in Khmer (most of which have two different pronunciations). Our list of vowels runs as follows:

1 ា AdAmantine IRis. The name has two words, which is typical. The first word AdAmantine encodes the A-series pronunciation, which is æː. In the IPA, æ is a wide "a" sound like "cat" and ː shows that the vowel is stretched out in time. I use A to represent æ and I use two of them AA to indicate the prolongation. This is a general rule of the system: where the IPA uses : to show that a vowel sound is stretched out, my system doubles the letter that encodes the IPA symbol.) The second word IRis encodes the O-series pronunciation, which is iːə. I represents the IPA i, which actually sounds like the "i" in "pizza" and R represents the schwa ə, which is a neutral vowel . I skipped the prolongation symbol for this one.

2 ិ Ebon Ink. The letter E of the first word Ebon encodes the A-series pronunciation e. The letter I of the second word Ink encodes the O-series pronunciation i.

3 ី RIch megatherIId. The letters RI of RIch encode the A-series pronunciation əj. (This is a diphthong, a combination of one vowel sliding into another. English has a lot of these, for example the "oi" in "coin".) Once again the letter R represents the IPA symbol ə. In the IPA the symbol j represents the sound "y" as in English "yes"; notice that this is very close to the IPA i, so I use the letter I to represent IPA j as well as IPA i. The double II in megatherIId represents the O-series pronunciation iː (prolonged i).

4 ឹ     RYe. I used a single word for this one because both pronunciations are simple vowel sounds. Once again the letter R represents the IPA letter ə. The letter Y, used here for the first but by no means the last time, represents the IPA letter ɨ, which can be described as a back unrounded vowel, and sorry, no, I won't explain what that means.

5 ឺ RYpophagous flYbY. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters RY, representing a diphthong composed of the two vowels əɨ (compare to the two separate pronunciations of the previous vowel. The O-series pronunciation is represented by YY, encoding a long version ɨː of the vowel ɨ 

6 ូ OUtsized UkUlele. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters OU, a diphthong rather similar to the "ow" in English "low." The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters UU, a long version uː of the vowel u, rather similar to the "u" in English "rule."

7 ួ URethane. I used a single word for this one because the A-series and O-series pronunciations are identical. Both are encoded by the letters UR, a diphthong uːə, prolonged u followed by ə.

8 ើ ARmored oRRery. The A-series pronunciation æːə is encoded by the letters AR. The O-series pronunciation əː is encoded by the letters RR.

9 ឿ hYRax. Once again, I used a single word for this one because the A-series and O-series pronunciations are identical. Both are encoded by the letters YR, a diphthong ɨːə, prolonged ɨː followed by ə.

10 ៀ IRon. Once again, I used a single word for this one because the A-series and O-series pronunciations are identical. Both encoded by the letters IR, a diphthong iːə, prolonged i: followed by ə.

11 េ EIghtfold EEl. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters EI, a diphthong eːi of prolonged e: followed by i. The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters EE, a prolonged eː.

12 ែ AErosol Egg. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters AE, a diphthong æːe. The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letter E , a prolonged ɛː (more like the "e" in English "bed").

13 ៃ AIry YIeld. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters AI, a diphthong aj. The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters YI, a diphthong ɨj.

14 ោ AOrtal OOze. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters AO, a diphthong æːo. The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters OO, a prolonged oː.

15 ៅ AWned YUrt. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters AW, a diphthong æw. The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters YU, a diphthong ɨw.

16 ុ OUtrigger. Once again, I used a single word for this one because both pronunciations are simple vowel sounds. The A-series pronunciation o is encoded by the letter O. The O-series pronunciation u is encoded by the letter U.

17 ំ ALUminum. This letter starts a new series of special nasalized vowels. All are distinguished by the little bubble mark above the consonant (this letter indeed consists of nothing but this bubble). and all are pronounced with "nasalization" like you find in French, for example; i.e., some of the breath is directed through the nose rather than the mouth. For this first one, I used a single word for both A-series and O-series pronunciations. The letters AL encode the A-series pronunciation ɑm. As a rule the system uses the letters AL for this variant of the ɑ-sound. The new combination AL shows the vowel sound ɑ, which is rather like the "a" in English "father." The m here does not indicate a sound like "mama" but marks the nasalization of the vowel. The letter U encodes the O-series pronunciation um, which is a nasalized version of the vowel u.

18 ុំ Marble OUtrigger. Here the word Marble shows that this is a nasalized vowel. The letter O encodes the A-series pronunciation om (nasalized o). The letter U encodes the O-series pronunciation um (nasalized u).

19 ាំ Marble Ashen ORange. Again the word Marble shows that this is a nasalized vowel. The letter A encodes the A-series pronunciation am (nasalized a). The letters OR encode the O-series pronunciation  oəm (nasalized oə).

20 ះ  Hairy Ashen ERaser. This letter starts a second series of special aspirated vowels, each marked by the two bubbles on the right. This indicates that the vowel is pronounced with sort of an "h" sound at the end of the syllable (which is the opposite of where it always comes in English). For all of these vowel names the word Hairy indicates this "h"-sound. Here the letter A encodes the A-series pronunciation aʰ (the small "h" coming at the end of the syllable). The letters ER encode the O-series pronunciation eəʰ.

21 ិះ  Hairy EpIcycle. Again the word Hairy indicates the "h" at the end of the syllable. The letter E encodes the A-series pronunciation eʰ. The letter I encodes the O-series pronunciation iʰ.

22 េះ  Hairy EIghtfold Éclair. Again the word Hairy indicates the "h" at the end of the syllable. The letters EI encode the A-series pronunciation eiʰ. The letter É encodes the O-series pronunciation eʰ.

23 ោះ Hairy ALbino URchin. Again the word Hairy indicates the "h" at the end of the syllable. The letters AL encode  the A-series pronunciation ɑʰ. The letters UR encode the O-series pronunciation ʊəʰ.

24 ុះ  Hairy OUtrigger. Again the word Hairy indicates the "h" at the end of the syllable.  The letter O encodes the A-series pronunciation oʰ. The letter U encodes the O-series pronunciation uʰ.

We come now to the final series of vowel symbols. These differ from all the others in that they are written as independent symbols rather than attached to a previous consonant sound. So far as I can tell they are used only when a vowel sound comes at the beginning of a word (although you can imagine having a word consisting solely of several vowel sounds).

Actually it is technically incorrect to say the vowel does not follow a consonant sound, because in fact it is preceded by a glottal stop--a catch-in-the-throat sound which you do hear in English but is not meaningful. In some other languages (like Arabic, for example) it works as a consonant sound on an equal basis with the others. This glottal stop is represented in the IPA by the symbol ʔ (like a question mark with no dot). This glottal stop is not represented in my names for the symbols.

Since these letters come only at the start of the word, and are not attached to any consonant, they do not have separate A-series and O-series pronunciations; each has a single pronunciation encoded by a single word.

25 ឥ Elephant. The letter E encodes the pronunciation ʔe.

26 ឦ RIxshaw. The letters RI encode the pronunciation ʔəj.

27 ឧ Ocean. The letter O encodes the pronunciation ʔo.

28 ឪ YUppie. The letters YU encode the pronunciation ʔɨw.

29 ឫ RYa. The letters RY encode the pronunciation ʔrɨ. Notice that here the R represents an actual r sound rather than the shwa as hitherto.

30 ឬ RYdberg. The letters  RY encode the pronunciation ʔrɨː. This is like the preceding, except prolonged, and so this one has the longer name. Once again the R represents an actual r sound rather than the shwa as hitherto.

31 ឭ LYceum. The letters LY encode the pronunciation ʔlɨ.

32 ឮ LYme grass. The letters LY encode the pronunciation ʔlɨː. This is like the preceding, except prolonged, and so it gets the longer name. 

33 ឯ AEpyornis. The letters AE encode the pronunciation, which I found described variously as ʔæe; or ʔɛː or ʔeː.

34 ឰ AIrship. The letters AI encode the pronunciation ʔaj. 

35 ឳ AUnt. The letters AU encode the pronunciation ʔaw. 

36 ឱ AOudad. The letters AO encode the pronunciation ʔaːo. 

37 ឩ Udder. The letter U encodes the pronunciation ʔu.

And that's it. This system helped me, taking the problem of learning Khmer script from impossible to merely difficult.

Resolutions 2020

I've got to learn from the greats, earn my right to be living, with every breath that I take, every heartbeat...

My list of resolutions for this year is shorter than some previous years. Why so? I'm not sure; perhaps it reflects an evolving strategy of prioritization.

1. Simplify my life. Reduce the number of my possessions. Drastically reduce my stack of unread books. Complete or abandon unfinished tasks. Extend the make-your-bed principle (I do make my bed) to keeping my various inboxes clear and relentlessly chipping away at my to-do list.

2. Hit the gym about 25% more often, no matter how busy I get. Every year for everyone should include at least one fitness-related goal. I'm optimistic about this one, because actually I've put it into effect for several weeks, and I'm seeing the results.

3. Start a new language. Most likely this will be Persian. It's not the first time I have "started" Persian, but circumstances are more favorable this time. Notably I have found an excellent italki teacher for Persian.

4. Continue improving my Vietnamese. After two years of assiduous study, I can have meaningful conversations. This is satisfying and at the same time stimulates my awareness of what I miss out on by not communicating better.

5. Make significant progress on my digital-imaging research project. (My day job)

6. Spend at least five minutes a day writing this blog. May not seem like much, but it should allow for significant progress.

Préceptes pour vivre comme James Bond

(Precepts for living like James Bond: as an exercise, I am rewriting the earlier post in French.)

1. Chercher de nouvelles expériences.

2. Il n'y a rien hors de vos limites.

3. Toute crise présente une occasion de pratiquer son sang-froid.

4. Etre toujours en train d'apprendre.

5. Chercher toujours des moyens d'augmenter le niveau de sa vie--physiquement, mentalement et financièrement.

6. Si on ne trouve pas de saveur dans sa vie, chercher ce qui doit changer, et le changer.

7. Le faire avec élan.

Update 11 March 2024: Heavily revised with help from my French teacher Julie

English/Thai Pun Sighting

Thought this was cute... spotted on a bag of potato chips. This is a variation on the Lays potato-chip logo:

This version is modified for Thailand. At a glance it appears to say something like "Lay." But if you ignore the big "L" the other two letters are the Thai symbols:

ลย

These are Thai letters corresponding to L-Y. So the Thai version of the brand name is hidden inside the English.

The Alphabet That Will Save a People From Disappearing

Interesting article at the Atlantic on the creation of a new alphabet for the Fulani language.

Marred by a slight instance of cultural chauvinism: I snorted my milk at the following sentence: "But unlike Arabic, whose short vowels are written as diacritical marks above and below letters, the script assigned its five vowels proper letters." Arabic vowels may be different from Latin vowels; that hardly makes them "improper."

I also learned a useful marketing idea for those creating a new alphabet: Choose a catchy word with no repeating letters; make those letters the first of your alphabet; then take that same word to be the name of your alphabet (just as "alphabet"="Alpha"+"Beta", the first two letters of the Greek alphabet). Such is the case with "Adlam", the new alphabet described here.

Starting up a New Language: Some Case Studies

Photo by Ryan Buterbaugh 

How best to tackle a new language depends on many factors:

1. How difficult do you expect it to be?

2. Is a new script involved?

3. What's your immediate goal? Your ultimate goal?

4. What tools are available?

5. How much time do you have available?

Herewith some examples of how I chose to attack some new languages.

Swahili. (First of all, my answers to the questions above: 1: easy. 2: no. 3: just want to make incremental progress. 4: fair number of courses and books available. 5: almost none.)

The approach: I use the Language/30 Swahili course and an old edition of Teach Yourself Swahili, which gives a bare-bones presentation of grammar and vocabulary.  I use Audacity to clip audio sentences from the Language/30 course and put the sentences with text into Anki flashcards. I create additional cards with words and sentences from the Teach Yourself book. The Teach Yourself cards have no audio, unless and until I find a good source for ad-hoc Swahili audio.

But Swahili pronunciation is pretty easy. The Language/30 samples should provide ample pronunciation practice, as well as providing a storehouse of useful sentences "in the bank." So far, at the rate of one new card per day (one new word or sentence every two or three days) it takes less than a minute a day, plus occasional prep time to create new cards.

Thai. (1: moderate to difficult. 2: yes. 3: just want to make incremental progress. 4: fair number of courses and books available. 5: very little.)

The approach. First I designed some mnemonics to help me memorize the Thai alphabet. I spent about a minute a day for some months just practicing the letters. I made Anki cards from the first few reading lessons of the Thai Pimsleur course, mostly just nonsense syllables, but it helped me get a foothold on reading. I continued with the Teach Yourself Thai book (with accompanying CD's--some form of audio companion is a huge advantage). Sample sentences from the book go onto flashcards, while I download audio for individual words from Google translate. (Note: I don't do this for Swahili because Google Translate's Swahili voice is a weird robot which I have no desire to emulate.) I also picked up Stu Jay Raj's unusual book Cracking Thai Fundamentals and started reading through it and making flash cards as necessary (it has less memory-intensive content). And by dint of some effort, I devised a streamlined formulation of the rules for determining tones from the Thai script.

Generally speaking, for each word, phrase, or sentence I have as many as five cards:

(1 "English to Thai") Input: English. Output: Thai audio.
(2 "Reading") Input: Thai script. Output: English and incidentally Thai audio.
(3 "Listening") Input: Thai audio. Output: English and incidentally Thai script.
(4 "Spelling") Input: English and Thai audio. Output: Thai script.

In line with a principle that good flash cards should expect a single response, the term "incidentally" here indicates that the card presents the information as part of the response but I need not reproduce it as a "correct" response.

Only a few cards are of type 4. I am ramping up gradually to writing Thai. I use conditional compilation for Anki to generate these cards only when I specify.

On the other hand, I like the daily exposure to reading Thai.

I currently spend about four minutes a day working through my Thai Anki deck, adding new cards from the Teach Yourself book, Cracking Thai Fundamentals, or occasionally the Pimsleur reading lessons as necessary.

Starting up Khmer and Burmese was very similar, the main difference being a relative paucity of available resources.

Sumerian. (1: moderate. 2: yes. 3: finish Hayes book [see below]. 4. Chiefly books. 5. very little [see a trend here?])

Sumerian is a dead language, which entails both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: 

(1) You need not be concerned about acquiring a perfect accent. For most dead languages, scholars are happy to inform you about the pronunciation with considerable detail and subtlety, but I'm always a little skeptical that they know quite as much as they think they do. Whether or not they really know what they're talking about, there's no harm in making things easy on yourself. This does not mean pronunciation can be ignored. I have yet to come across a writing system in which sound does not play some partial role at least. In the case of Sumerian, the writing is a combination of ideographic and phonetic symbols. Many words and phrases have alternate spellings. Having a crude idea of the pronunciation makes it much easier to recognize these.

(2) Likewise, you may choose to (or be forced to) downplay skills of writing and listening in favor of reading. Focusing on just one of the four standard language skills certainly simplifies matters.

For Sumerian, I depended on a single resource: John Hayes' book A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts. Incidentally I see the hardcover edition of the book is now going for $4000. which makes me feel strangely wealthy. The book provides many samples of Sumerian texts, with vocabulary lists and extensive discussions of each.

Sumerian is written in a cuneiform script, which my computer does not support. Certainly the computer would not reproduce the variety of sizes and shapes of the historical texts. Here Anki's ability to handle images facilitates greatly. By scanning a page, and clipping out samples of text, I can reproduce any word or phrase from the book.

Generally I use two Anki cards for each item of Sumerian text:

(1 "Reading") Input: Sumerian text. Output: the transliteration (phonetic reading) of the text.
(2 "English") Input: Sumerian text and transliteration. Output: the English translation.

I also use Anki Cloze cards for grammar rules, historical facts, etc.

This approach lets me work through at a steady (if slow) pace, while committing to heart the memorization-related content and reading some phrases of text (while reviewing Anki cards) every day.

More Arabic Mnemonics

This is a companion to my earlier post on mnemonics for Arabic roots. An interesting feature of Arabic is that most words can be decomposed into a root and a pattern. The root consists strictly of consonants (usually three), while the pattern consists of vowels plus possible additional consonants.

In English we can see something of how this works by considering the words sing, sang, sung, song, singer. We could think of these composed of an underlying root s-ng overlaid on various patterns 1i2, 1a2, 1u2, 1o2, 1i2er.

We could combine some of these patterns with a different root dr-k to yield new words: drink, drank, drunk, drinker (but no dronk, unfortunately).

To repeat my earlier example, in Arabic, there is a root ك ت ب (k-t-b) which has to do generally with writing. Some of the words formed from this root by fitting it into different patterns would be:

كَتَبَ (kataba = k-t-b × 1a2a3a) "he wrote"
كِتَاب (kitaab = k-t-b × 1i2aa3) "book"
مَكْتَبَة (maktaba = k-t-b × ma12a3a) "library"


Most (not all) Arabic roots consist of exactly three consonants. The earlier post described a fairly complicated method for encoding these three consonants in an English word of phrase. This is not so simple because Arabic distinguishes many consonant sounds which English doesn't.

To be honest, the previous method is a sledgehammer, really important only for the most stubborn cases. Many roots (like the forementioned k-t-b) can stick in the mind with modest effort—especially if you remember just one of the derived words (such as "book").

In putting this method into practice, I realized that the puzzle needed another piece—an idea I borrowed from Heisig's method for Chinese characters. This extra piece is an English name for the root, analogous to Heisig's keywords. In the case of Arabic, I don't call this name a "keyword" but rather a "syndrome." For example, the syndrome for the forementioned k-t-b root is "write."

One-by-one I peruse my Arabic dictionary (which groups together words sharing the same root), and do my best to choose an English syndrome which comes closest to capturing the spectrum of meanings associated with the root. I don't do this for every Arabic word I encounter, but only for those that I find particularly hard to remember.

For example, one pair of words that gave me trouble was:

طابِق (Taabiq), plural طَوابِق (Tawaabiq): a floor or story of a building, versus:طَبَق (Tabaq), plural أطباق ('aTbaaq): a dish or course of a meal.

Both share the root طبق (T-b-q), but I could see scant connection in the meanings. But perusing the various words associated with this root, it seems most are related to the idea of one thing on top of another. The floors of a building are arranged this way, as is the lid for a dish. The idea of a "dish" of a meal seems to be derived from the latter. I therefore chose the word "superpose" as the syndrome for the T-b-q root.

Here's a list of some of the syndromes I have selected thus far, along with a sample word for each.

dissociate	هجر (h-j-r)	هاجَرَ haajara (migrated)
disjoin	فصل (f-S-l)	فَصْل faSl (to dismiss, fire)
highborn	شرف (sh-r-f)	يُشْرِف yushrif (supervises)
hone	حدد (H-d-d)	حّدِيِد Hadiid (iron)
fan out	نشر (n-sh-r)	نَشَرَ nashara (published)
confer	خول (kh-w-l)	أَخْوال 'akhwaal (maternal uncles)

This leaves the issue of the pattern. How do I remember that طابِق (Taabiq) is a building story and طَبَق (Tabaq) is a dish rather than vice-versa? (This particular pair was a real issue for me.) These words have the same roots but different patterns. The Arabic grammarians had the clever idea of using the root فعل (f-`-l) "do" as a "neutral" root. They then described a given pattern by applying it to this "neutral" root. For طابِق (Taabiq), the pattern of vowels is (_aa_i_). For طَبَق (Tabaq), the pattern of vowels is (_a_a_). The Arabic terms for these patterns would be فّاعِل (faa`il) and فَعَل (fa`al), respectively.  

For the most part I handle this with a very simple device (also highly adaptable to many other situations). For a given pattern, I choose just one example of the pattern to use as a mnemonic hook for the pattern itself. For example consider the two patterns just mentioned: _aa_i_ and _a_a_. The former also appears in the word هاتِف haatif "telephone" and the latter in the word بَصَل baSal "onions". I use these words to represent their associated patterns. Thus the word طابِق (Taabiq) is broken down into superpose × telephone (root × pattern) while طَبَق (Tabaq) is broken down into superpose × onions. And my trouble in keeping this straight is resolved by creating whatever mental images serve to associate telephone with story of a building and onions with dish. 

In choosing a keyword to represent a given pattern, I try to choose something concrete, visualizable, and as distinct as possible from other keywords.

Here's a list of patterns and their associated keywords. Both this and the previous list are works in progress. I add words as I find I need them.

عَباءة `abaa'ah wool cloak	فَعَالَة _a_aa_ah
مُدُن  mudun towns	فُعُل _u_u_
صَحْن SaHn plate	فَعْل _a__
فُلُوس fuluus money	فُعُول _u_uu_
بِدَل bidal suits	فِعَل _i_a_
أَرْجُل 'arjul legs	أَفْعُل ’a__u_
مَسْرَح masraH theater	مَفْعَل ma__a_
بَصَل baSal onion	فَعَل _a_a_
قُفَّاز quffaaz gloves	فُعَّال _u_2aa_ (2 indicates double vowel)
رِسالة risaalah letter	فِعَالَة _i_aa_ah
سِجْن sijn jail	فِعْل _i__
خَلِيج khaliij gulf	فَعِيل _a_ii_
أَنْهَار 'anhaar rivers	أَفْعَال ’a__aa_
سَتائِر sataa'ir curtains	فَعَائِل _a_aa’i_
رِياح riyaaH winds	فِعَال _i_aa_
قُفْل qufl lock	فُعْل _u__
مَنْزِل manzil house	مَفْعِل ma__i_
فَواكِه fawaakih fruits	فَواعِل _awaa_i_
عَرُوس `aruus bride	فَعُول _a_uu_
هاتِف haatif telephone	فَاعِل _aa_i_

A couple more examples: طَوابِق (Tawaabiq), plural of طابِق (Taabiq), breaks down into superpose × fruits (T-b-q  × _awaa_i_), whereas أطباق ('aTbaaq), plural of طَبَق (Tabaq), breaks down into superpose × rivers (T-b-q × 'a__a_).



The Arabic verb forms get special treatment. Each verb form is a coordinated set of patterns describing the various verb forms. These are numbered from one I through ten X. Thus for a Form-IV verb, you know not only that the past-tense pattern is i__aa_a, but the present-tense pattern is yu__i_.  More information is available in an Arabic grammar book or various places on the Internet.

For the verb forms, rather than the example method I use for other patterns, I chose a code word for each form from II through X:

Form II	ninja
Form III	maiko, or mikado
Form IV	ramen
Form V	anime
Form VI	shinkansen
Form VII	Godzilla
Form VIII	futon
Form IX	pagoda
Form X	sushi

I was guided by the Major system in choosing the code words, but that is not really important. Almost any set of visualizable code words works just as well once committed to memory. I also chose words with Japanese connotations. You might wonder why. Why not choose words with Arabic connotations—sultan rather than sushi, for example? The reason is that sultan may well turn out to be a specific vocabulary item to be memorized. Using the same word as a code word creates a minor possibility for confusion. 

You notice also that I have two different code words for Form III. This is to distinguish the two versions of Form III that have different patterns for the "verbal noun". Maiko is used for those verbs with a verbal noun of pattern مُفَاعَلة (mu_aa_a_ah). Mikado is used for those verbs with a verbal noun of pattern فَعَالٌ (_a_aa_).

Form I presents a more complicated situation. Any of the three Arabic vowels a, i, u may appear in the past-tense form, and any of the three may also appear in the present-tense form (although not all combinations appear). The Form I code words are chosen to describe these vowels as well:

tatoo: past a, non-past u
taxi: past a, non-past i
tatami: past a, non-past a
titan: past i, non-past a
tutu: past u, non-past u

(BTW in researching this post I learned that there are actually fifteen verb forms, but forms XI to XV are extremely rare. The system is easy to extend in any case.)