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I was hoping we could make a list of Japanese Mnemonics. It can include ones you have heard or have made up. I think this will be helpful to people who have a harder time to make them up on there own. Rules could be, browse through the past entry’s in the thread and make sure your specific mnemonic hasn’t been posted before (or already has several examples) and then post your brilliant mnemonic. Is anyone with me? Suggests or ideas appreciated (*^_^*)☆彡
Mnemonics for what? Do you have any examples or are you just planning to leech off us? :P
Heisig’s RTK is based around mnemonics for learning how to write kanji, so you could start by looking there :)
Sure I’ll give you some.
Problem is I’ve never used mnemonics for Japanese :/
I was thinking for vocabular mostly. But it could help with anything else also. And sure, I will give some examples later today, because I am about to leave for work. I was planning to give some examples, but last night all I had was time to write up the post! I apologize for that. I am not sure if a thread would work very well though. A user supported mnemonics database you can search for a particular word or kanji would be even better….
I’m kinda with missing: while I rely on mnemonics for learning kanji (which are freely available on both TextFugu and kanji.koohii.com[user-submitted mnemonics]), I haven’t really used mnemonics for anything else. None that I can think of anyway, sorry :(
I didn’t know about that website. I will check it out. An example of what I am talking about is the following: to learn the word to lend かします you’d think about lending cash. What do you lend… Cash… かします. I’m not sure if were thinking the same thing? (´･_･`)
I don’t even use mnemonics with Kanji.
This is just my opinion so feel free to disagree but I think that mnemonics are a waste of time. The way I see it, I think “Why spend my time making mnemonics and them memorizing them, only to memorize the actual content, when I can directly start raw memorizing the material itself”. Either way, if you’re studying and exposing yourself, you will repeatedly see it until you just know it.
Now, I’m not saying that mnemonics didn’t work for anybody – rather any kind of effort that you put into learning will help you in the end. I just prefer to do it through raw memorization.
So sorry, none from me. You can visit kanji.koohi.com like MisterM said if you need mnemonics for kanji. Though I will say, you’re imagination is the limit.
But then you didn’t use RTK and thus didn’t see how good they are for learning how to write haha Everyone prefers different methods though.
For stuff like the かします = “cash”, I guess I do do that, but I don’t do it “actively” (if you know what I mean). Things like that just sort of pop in to my head, and most of the time they don’t actually make sense. I’m trying to think of an example, but most are so fleeting and nonsensical that they’re I wouldn’t create a list of them and they probably wouldn’t help anyone else – no one else had the thought process/random inspiration that lead to them. My explanation isn’t that clear, but what you gonna do?
運ぶ（はこぶ）[to carry] – はこ is the word for “box”, and “carry” just sorta fits (one of the more logical ones I guess)
履く（はく）[to wear shoes] – for a brief moment I messed up and thought はく meant “box”, which has nothing to do with anything, but it made me remember anyway XD
逃げる（にげる）[to escape, to run away] – にげる sounds like… a certain N-word, which leads me to think of slaves runnning away (it seems I remember the more logical ones a bit better)
比べる（くらべる）[to compare] – sounds a bit like “club”, which has nothing to do with anything
散歩します（さんぽします）[to take a walk] – the way Koichi says it in the audio for the Anki deck I thought was funny :P (I used strange audio (from smart.fm) to remember 丁寧（ていねい）[polite] too haha)
Do you see my point?
Other words, I just remember because I saw them somewhere and they just… stuck, I guess, for whatever reason. I guess I remember where I saw them, the surroundings or how I wrote them at the time, and that helped.
One more example: years ago, when I was a lot younger, I played this Dragon Ball Z fighting game (Budokai) and the announcer said what I heard to be “Hajimarimass!”, which for some reason I still remember after all this time. When I found out it was something like “begin” I was like :D and it stuck.
MisterM2402: But then you didn’t use RTK and thus didn’t see how good they are for learning how to write haha
You’re absolutely right. I don’t know anything.
But hey, I’m just a beginner ヽ(´ー｀)ノ
Hey Adriana, if you ever have any future questions about Japanese, don’t forget to ask MisterM. He knows what he’s talking almost all the time. I’m sure he’ll be a nice guy and answer all your questions and concerns with utmost precision to the point where he can put Koichi out of business.
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This reply was modified 13 years, 4 months ago by
missingno15.
I quite agree.
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This reply was modified 13 years, 4 months ago by
MisterM2402 [Michael].
No need to be sarcastic, missing. He only made a harmless but also truthful point.
Anyway, I’m off to Amsterdam until Wednesday so I’m going to sleep in my forum coffin.
@Kaona: You’re probably gone already, but you don’t need to get at him. It was just a gentle bit of piss-taking, no harm done :P Thanks for sticking up for me though XD
I’ve personally found mnemonics to be one of the most powerful study techniques, but I think they often work best when you make the time investment to come up with your own. A lot of the mnemonics I use play on personal memories or people I know so aren’t really transferrable. The key is to make them very visual and involve some kind of interaction. I also find the more ludicrous the better. Japanese is also an ideal language for using mnemonic devices as it’s quite a phonetic language. You can create mnemonic devices for each sound or common compound sounds and then chain them together.
Before starting Japanese I spent 2 years studying Chinese using the memory-by-rote “method” of writing characters over and over again. I only wish I had come across mnemonics earlier as they would have helped me so much with Chinese. I find I can quite easily learn 3x as many new words in an afternoon of mnemonics based study (you could probably just keep going too). I’ll then review once the next day and again a few days later – then it’s pretty much in there. Sure they take a bit more initial time investment but this pays off 100x in the long-term memory advantages.
If anyone is interested I’d highly recommend the book “Your Memory – How it works & how to improve it” by Kenneth L. Higbee. It’s full of not only memory techniques but also fascinating explanations of why these techniques work, and how the brain and memory work. I really think this kind of stuff should be taught at schools – learning how to learn is so important.
What Sumisuben said. I can learn kanji readings and vocab associated with kanji without problem, but learning vocab not associated with kanji got 10x easier when I started making my own mnemonics for each one.
Every once in a while I go searching for a mnemonic dictionary, which reminded me of this post. I think mnemonics mostly benefit the creator rather than the reader, simply because it’s more personal (as what MisterM2402 seems to imply) . But, I think if they’re good enough (i.e. catchy), they could help other people. If they’re totally random…not so much.
Here’s some I just came up with:
慣れる [なれる] – Nah, days do feel shorter, but I’ve grown accustomed to them.
間違える [まちがえる] – My cheese got ate dude, what a mistake.
厚さ [あつさ] – My Aunt Sue’s socks are really thick.
自動車[じどうしゃ] – Gee, [that] “door shape” looks cool on those automobiles.
着替える [きがえる] – Oh no, my key got ate, dude. How are we going to change clothes now?If they don’t help the reader directly, hopefully it’ll help inspire a more personal mnemonic. A searchable dictionary would be great, maybe even with a rating system for each mnemonic per word. Hmmmmmmm…..
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