Mnemonic comic for 高

Translation

gāo = g + ao1: high / tall / above average / loud / your (honorific)

Mnemonic

A mnemonic is a short, deliberately ridiculous scene, built to be hard to forget. Who appears in it and where it takes place are how the pronunciation is stored; the objects in it stand for the parts the character is written with. That is the Marilyn Method, and the comic below is the same scene, drawn.

Guy Fawkes (g) guards the border control checkpoint (冋) at the foot of a skyscraper in front of the aorta (ao1). The wind snatches his beret (亠) and sets it on the spire, so now the skyscraper wears it. He hurls a mandarin (口) to knock it down, but the tower is so high (高) that the mandarin turns back halfway up.

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How to pronounce 高

MandarinBanana teaches pronunciation with the Marilyn Method: every Pinyin syllable is one initial plus one final, the initial becomes a person, an animal or a deity, and the final becomes a place in your memory palace — with the tone deciding which part of that place the scene happens in. Remember the little story below for each half and the whole syllable comes back with them.

= g initial

G is for Guy Fawkes.

By Matthias • updated 4 months ago
+ ao1 final

In front of the aorta.

By Matthias • updated 17 days ago

高 character breakdown

Chinese characters are built out of smaller characters. Each component carries a mnemonic symbol - one concrete object that stands in for it - and a mnemonic story hands those objects to the person and the place that stand for the pronunciation. Learn a component once and every character that reuses it gets easier.

Component Translations
亠
tóu = t + ou2
"lid" radical in Chinese characters (Kangxi radical 8)
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archaic variant of 坰[jiong1]
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口
kǒu = k + ou3
mouth / classifier for things with mouths (people, domestic animals, cannons, wells etc) / classifier for bites or mouthfuls
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Characters with 高 as component

搞
gǎo = g + ao3
to do / to make / to go in for / to set up / to get hold of / to take care of
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敲
qiāo = qi + ao1
to hit / to strike / to tap / to rap / to knock / to rip sb off / to overcharge
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gǎo = g + ao3
variant of 稿[gao3]
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Words with 高

show 874 more
happy / glad / willing (to do sth) / in a cheerful mood
senior high school / abbr. for 高級中學|高级中学[gao1 ji2 zhong1 xue2]
to pass brilliantly (used in congratulatory fashion)
Sentences with 高
天
tiān
王
wáng
高
gāo
见
jiàn
 
 
我
wǒ
老
lǎo
头
tóu
领
lǐng
教
jiào
 
 
领
lǐng
教
jiào

Want to remember 高 for good?

Make it your learning target and MandarinBanana works out the shortest route to it: the two sounds its syllable is built from, then the components of the character itself, one short step at a time. No account needed to start.

高
gāo

high / tall / above average / loud / your (honorific)

Prompt snippets

The skyscraper is a slender, very tall glass-and-steel tower with a dark blue-green glass curtain wall in a fine grid of silver mullions, a few stepped setbacks near the top, and a single thin needle spire rising from its flat roof.

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