While researching ways of learning it, I recalled the book Cheaper By The Dozen, that I had read years ago, had a bit on how Frank Gilbreth trained his 12 kids in it. A bit of googling, and I found the technique, but not the complete training set, just the phrases for the first three letters.
I mentioned this technique one night to my friend Lion Kimbro, who is interested in mind, mentation, self education, thought process modelling, and in "mind hacks" years before the concept exploded across the blogovers and wikiverse.
He apparently mentioned it to one Ron Hale-Evans.
Who reconstructed a phrase set, and included it in the new O'Reilly book Mind Performance Hacks. That particular chapter is even freely available.
The world is a weird cascade of personal interactions...