Here is a link for an mnemonic system based on the sounds in Mandarin. I would be interested in knowing what all you guys learning Chinese think. Can we refine this into something we can use and do you guys think it is worth the time and effort it would take to master it. I personally think it has great promise.
Great article, cheers. This actually helps me out a lot with a problem Iāve been having lately. Iām new to memory palaces and towns and to be honest was finding the whole concept a little daunting, but this breaks it down and makes it more manageable. Canāt wait to try it out.
Nice post. Now i can go for chinese. Great thanks
I saw that and itās definitely a good idea. The main thing about it is that itās overkill in most cases.
Iāve found that in most cases assigning a color and emotion to each tone and then using the standard methods for memorizing foreign vocabulary is sufficient. The flash cards I use will always have the character and the pronunciation on them at first.
Once Iāve managed to attach the meaning to the spoken word, Iāll usually have enough of an idea what the character looks like in order to type it in pinyin. At that point, Iāll usually go about trying to figure out how to write it from radicals, if I havenāt alrady figured it out.
But, there is some benefit from having a system for generating images for anything you might want to learn. The downside is that it wonāt spread across Chinese languages as well as what I outlined above.
This is a one year late reply.
I have been developing a system to remember the pronunciation of Chinese characters.
It consists of:
A. The āconsonantā, which is a Disney Movie (Tarzan, Lion King, Pinocchio, etc.)
B. The tone, which is a character of the movie. And it works as follows: 1st tone, main male character; 2nd main female character; 3rd the evil guy; 4th other characters.
C. The rest of the character is a trade or a job, which includes an activity and an environment.
So P is the movie Pinocchio, T is Tangled, N is peter paN, F is Fantasia (Mickey Mouse), X is the Xuord in the Stone, etc.
While using Chinese usually I have problems remembering A and B, but not C, so often I donāt use C. So, I have less practice with this part.
For instance, yesterday while reading a came across these two words: ęÆÆå ęµ·ē. I know they are TAN, but I always forget the tone. So, I look at the dictionary, and see ęÆÆ is 3rd and ē is 1st. So, I imagine the evil character in the movie Tangled playing with a blanket (as usual, the more exaggerated the better), and then the male character in the beach.
I didnāt include the AN part because I donāt have problems remembering that, but just for the record is a construction worker building a wall.
I donāt think this is āoverkillingā, I have tried other simpler methods without success, and this one definitively works for me.
In order to get acquainted with the movie characters, I found in the web many useful images with all the male, female and evil characters in the same image.
The tone according to movie character is useful, because, for instance, the 2nd tone is always a female, so, it is easy to remember and recall. Also the movie characters are full of colour, they have voice, even songs and a story. I think this is an advantage over the system of the link above.
I have another system for writing character which involves personae from the Lord of the Rings.
Pixar characters are used in another system in which I am memorizing some key concepts from a book.
Thanks
What is highly interestingā¦not discounting what you wrote at allā¦I got on tangential thinking hereā¦Is that the Japanese have a Superior system to learning kanji/chinese characters. I know that itās much maligned, their teach model, but actually it shouldnāt be and is what accounts for, well, just another example of some serious shaky logic on the part of people (i.e. scholars and such) who really should know better.
The Japanese student probably doesnāt know either, believe it or not. Itās sort of subconsciousā¦I mean they stare at this grid that logical locates their syllabery (kana) and they probably would like nothing better but look at something without gridsā¦I wonder if they continue to be adverse to gridsā¦Anyway, he/the native Japanese get it on some level. The process at least which is location basedā¦And they (the Japanese) display this teaching method since itās definitely there. No doubt. They prove it since they are content using their syllabary to find kanji - on mobile phones or what-not. So the kanji and pronunciation have been firmly fixed in their brainā¦theyāve been known to blank on the kanji meaning, but not the pronunciation.
For, you see Itās location based (I know I already said that!). They learned the hiragana and itās on a gridā¦so all the boxes (45 to 48) of them represent a syllableā¦To the kanji this box even though representing one syllable is quite sufficient to store the kanji inside that box (most readings of kanji are one syllable) However, the very first kanji in first grade is Ichiā¦for āfirstā or āoneāā¦or āsaltyā when mixed with the kanji for salt (so there goes all that logic put on emphasizing the meaning of these instrutable things). But ichi is two syllables, which is rareā¦AND (and think this is what throws people is the āiā is the second in the furagami orderā¦(abcs). However, āIchiā still it goes in the second square down. which is āiā (more or lessā¦well, lessā¦itās coincidental. They have a i u e oā¦and some of the characters look similar, but are actually derived from calligraphy way way back) ā I think thatās what throws people is that One is first - which makes sense, but the next is Rock and the next after that is Rain and 3 comes before 2. Blah, blah, blahā¦But āaā, the first one, is not used in the first grade. So, ichi (one) is the first in line!
If someone in the West actually bothered to look close they would see why it is organized that way and that it is indeed location basedā¦location linked with pronunciation. Now thatās a good system! In fact, I would suggest if someone were learning SATs or a lot of stuff really to perhaps learning one of the two or both of the Japanese Alphabet. Maybe that would free up some space and put some location on itā¦I got to write something about that deal!----my theory is that the brain sees something so foreign like Japanese that it (unlike the Englishy languages) will actually free up space. And space which goes into a fixed sized grid to boot.
Sometimes I do wonder about peopleā¦But in the defense of no one in particular the Japanese language has only been around for the West for about 100 or so yearsā¦so, it takes time, I guess. Paul
This is the best book I have ever seen to learn characters. There is also a version for Japanese kanji. I donāt follow the method of this book, but a similar one. I wish I had known that book when I started to study Chinese.
Remembering Simplified Hanzi: Book 1, How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters Paperback ā October, 2008. by James W. Heisig (Author), Timothy W. Richardson (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1417869672&sr=8-2&keywords=how+to+remember+chinese+characters
I will read carefuly your post, because it contains at lot of information.
Thanks
Thanks for the replyā¦hope it wasnāt too clunky. I actually had gone in a completely different direction and then decided I better turn around! But I think is all fascinating whether itās mnemonics or even cultural. For instance, whatās really been of interest to me is the Unicode and the general attitude of the ātheyā in Unicode toward the Japanese. It really is grating Japan badly and it is surfacing in fairly conventional papersā¦that you really sense something negative building up in Japan. I can read maybe on a intermediate level (but canāt follow a simple audio clip to save my life) and I read a bit in āLiveDoorā once a day or two and I have noted a general trend of irritation toward the West. It used to be underneath quite a bit, but itās coming out more and more. And Unicode people have adopted this ānormativeā standards which is basically the status quo is how itās goiing to beā¦and all this grumbling, well, weāve bent over backwards for Japan and we have been so gracious about that we canāt help but point out how irrational and uncooperative they are. Iāve read things of that nature from some semi-official documents (as official as Unicode gets actually). Itās normativeā¦so itās like Wikipedia or something. Anyway, it does astounding. And Shift JIS (what the Japanese adopted from Microsoft) is actually Japanese saying āwe are ready to implement this according to unicode if they are so graciousāā¦and āyou know we will use less space tooā.
In the end, even if Japan WAS being totally obnoxious in their demands (which Unicode tries to claim - speciously so) that whoās problem is that? Unicode. The mandate is to get everyone on board and Japan is not. Neither (I think) is China even though they have pretended to be very ameable and participate in the various consortium meetings. (Japan does not!) I think the trend in China is actually their Pinyin. And not this āradicalā or as Heisig callās it Primative (that is still stuck in my brain getting those names mixed) and China only adopted the idea of radicals for catagorizing purposes in 1800s when they were quite weakā¦
I do have something unique if you wish to know about it let me knowā¦anyone! Paul Z
I know this post is quite old, but I was wondering;
What is one tweaked the Marilyn Monroe method to look more like a PAO system? I mean, instead of using ālocationsā for finals, we use āactionsā instead. And then use objects for the tones (5 in total, incl. the ānon-toneā).
That way one can link the wordās definition, character and its pronunciation to one loci in a memory palaceā¦
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Lynne Kelly worked out this system and I am trying it and so far I think it is better and makes a bit more sense than the Marilyn Method but it is inspired by it. It uses actions for the finals, directions the actions are happening in for the tones, and then the locations are the radicals. I have a system Iām working out that is a bit of a combination between the Hanzi Movie method and the Radical Beasts method, because I have a āpropā for each radical, like the Hanzi Movie Method, as well as a location, like the Radical Beasts method. My method is a bit overcomplicated and is a result of trying one method, then learning of another one and trying that one too, resulting in a wierd hybred method I wouldnāt recommend to anyone. I think Radical Beasts is the most logical and best mnemonic system for Chinese learning Iāve found so far. Much respect to Lynne Kelly for putting in all this work then publishing it for free, check it out. They donāt let you put in links but look up Lynne Kelly Radical Beasts and itāll come up.
Wow, itās been so long since Iāve made that post, Iāve completely forgotten about it. I donāt even do mnemonics anymore, I was never able to utilise it so fully I gave up, I guess. Thanks for the suggestion, Iāll definitely check it out.