Initial letters catch more attention for a mnemonic

In the Appendix of either Learning Spanish Words or Learning French Words , I describe some tips on creating mnemonics. Over the years I have found another fact I should add to the article, i.e. initial letters of a word or word root catch more attention for a mnemonic. For example, when you learn the Italian word rupestre ("rocky" or "rock" used as adj.; also a French and Spanish word, e.g. peinture rupestre, pintura rupestre "rock painting" or "cave painting"), your first impression is probably some word like ruby because you naturally focus on the first part of the word and ignore the latter part, which often is a suffix or something like that anyway. So ruby ("a kind of precious stone") is taken to be a mnemonic, and it's actually a good one (imagine reddish rock paintings). We can think of many other examples:

* French branché ("trendy"): Think of brand (focus on bran- and more or less ignore -ché).
* French cravate: crave for a necktie (ignore -te)
* French entamer ("to start"): You can strip the prefix and use tame as a mnemonic (to get along with and eventually use a wild horse, you have to tame him first), but the initial letters of entamer look like enter , whose meaning more or less matches "start". So why not use that?
* French matelas ("mattress"): You can use mat as a memonic even though mat is etymologically unrelated. Interestingly, matelas and mattress are cognates because they both come from one single Old French word (which comes from Arabic), but it may not be easy to think of changing l of matelas to r to associate it with mattress.
* French sabot ("hoof"; "wooden shoe", "clog"): Cognate with Spanish zapato (“shoe”), after which the online shoe retailer Zappos was named. But if you don't know Spanish, as a mnemonic, just think of the saddle on a horse when you see sa- of this word (but you still need to move your thought from saddle down to hoof).

* Spanish acantilado ("cliff"; "steep"): Imagine cantaloupes grown on a cliff (focus on the root, i.e. without prefix a-).
* Spanish aseverar ("to assert"): The first three letters or two syllables ase - may be a hint for assert.
* Spanish azotar ("to whip"): Imagine an Aztec man whipping another man, perhaps a captured enemy tribesman.
* Spanish cacique ("chieftain"): Imagine the chieftain of a Native American tribe cuts the ribbon at the opening ceremony of a new casino in this Indian reserve.
* Spanish fosa ("pit"): Think of a fox in a pit.
* Spanish legado ("legacy"): English legacy is from Old French legacie, from Medieval Latin legatia, from legatus (“legate”, “envoy”), from which Spanish legado is directly derived. It's easier to just focus on the first two syllables of legado and legacy.
* Spanish zanahoria ("carrot"): carrot as salad (focus on zana- although you sure can use another word to accomodate -horia, e.g. carrot as salad plus Oriel cookies)