Mnemonic comic for

Translation

= gu + Ø3: ancient / old / paleo-

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.

Mnemonic symbol: at least on German maps, this character actually resembles a cloister.

Oh no! Gitta Giraffe (gu) found that the golden cross (十) broke off of the cloister (古) in the space station’s living room (Ø3)! She skewers a mandarin (口) on top of the cloister so that she can skewer the broken off cross back on to fix it.

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All translations for 古

= gu + Ø3
surname Gu
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= gu + Ø3
ancient / old / paleo-
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Comments

Shoutout to Firkin for uploading this church to https://openclipart.org/detail/232729/church-3. They write: "From a drawing in 'Description des villes et campagnes du département de l'Yonne', Victor Petit, 1870."

Matthias, over 2 years ago

How to pronounce 古

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.

= gu initial

Gu is for Gitta Giraffe.

By Matthias • updated 3 months ago
+ Ø3 final

In the space station’s living room.

By Matthias • updated 5 months ago

古 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
shí = sh + Ø2
ten / 10
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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 古 as component

= gu + Ø1
(onom.) for the sound of a bird, an empty stomach etc
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= ku + Ø1
skeleton
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= gu + Ø3
to implicate / net for birds or fish
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Words with 古

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strange / weird / eccentric / bizarre
ancient / old / age-old
Sentences with 古
古 currently does not appear in any sentence.

Want to remember 古 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.

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