The kanji is pronounced “ryou” as far as I know. I think you are correct about the mnemonic part. However, as for your second question you don’t entirely ignore it. The little ya, yu, yo just modify the sound. They add a “y” sound before the vowel, and make the actual pronunciation quicker. So “riu” is different from “ryu”. “Ryu is faster as the “I” sound in “riu” is more stressed and stand alone than the “y” sound in “ryu” (tell me if I’m making no sense :P)

Also, please excuse my lack of hiragana. My ipad won’t allow me to install global keyboards. *sob*

Yes that’s right. So りょう　becomes ryou.

So you take the first part of the hiragana in this case ‘R’ chop off the the vowel, ‘I’ in this case, and add the ‘U’ which simply makes the ‘O’ part longer.

So with きょ　it would be kyo and with きょう it’s like kyoo as far as pronunciation goes.

You will often find that Koichi’s mnemonics don’t like up well with the actual sounds of the pronunciations. He does mention somewhere that these are supposed to be close approximations to the sound you need to help your mind bridge the gap, but won’t get you there completely.

If you can think of something better, that might even make sense to you, but no one else, go for it. Use that instead, as you will find that some of his mnemonics will make it harder for you to remember what is correct.

JoshuaJSlone wrote:

Yeah, the sound mnemonics can be a pretty big stretch. Over at WaniKani there’s a new vocab that’s still killing me; the suggestion is to remember “Okay now！” for おこなう.

This one is a shinning example. I’ve recently had this one as well, and that mnemonic is plain rubbish, doesn’t help me at all. The problem is there’s not really anything else in English that is any closer to it.

I ended up having to think of someone drunk saying ‘Okinawa’ to remember it. Still doesn’t line up, but it’s close enough that with a mental note, I can fix the differences.

I’ve currently started watching some anime just so I can become familiar with some Japanese character names, specifically to use in my own mnemonics. As Japanese names will often contain parts that line up much better with what your trying to remember than any English word could, or in some instances are exactly the same as the sound you are trying to remember. It also helps as it keeps your brain in Japanese mode so you don’t have to access your English lexicon to remember a Japanese word.