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.
Julian Giant Squid (zhu) is playing cards with Martin Luther King (王) in the space station (Ø3). It’s Martin Luther King’s turn, and he holds a petal (丶) in his hand high above his head: it’s his trump card, and on it depicted is the Lord (主) himself.
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.
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.
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.
owner / master / host / individual or party concerned / God / Lord / main / to indicate or signify / trump card (in card games)
The Lord is a young man with long hair and a full beard. He wears an ancient tunic and has a halo hovering above and behind his head.
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