I don't know about English, but in Japanese digits can be pronounced in several ways and many of them are short (e.g. 1 = "hi", "i", "in" or "hito", 2 = "ni", "

I don't know about English, but in Japanese digits can be pronounced in several ways and many of them are short (e.g. 1 = "hi", "i", "in" or "hito", 2 = "ni", "nin", "fu", "bu", "pu" or "futa", etc), so it's typical to compose a meaningful phrase or sentence to memorize various numbers (e.g. phone numbers). Remembering pi is a popular game among nerdy kids; I can still recite 200 digits I remembered back in elementary school. Several friends of mime can do 100-800 digits. For those who can read Japanese, this is one of old ways to remember first 40 digits or so. For 100 digits or more you usually need to come up your own mnemonics: 産医師異国に向こう/産後厄無く/産婦御社に/虫さんざん闇になく/ご礼には早ういくな Pronounces: さんいしいこくにむこう/さんごやくなく/さんぷみやしろに/むしさんざんやみになく/ごれいにははよういくな Corresponds to: 3.14159265 / 358979 / 3238462 / 643383279 / 502884197 Roughly translates to: An obstetrician goes abroad. Postpartum is without problem. The new mother is to visit a shrine. Crickets are chirping in darkness. Do not hurry to visit.