Mnemonic comic for

Translation

shì = sh + Ø4: member of the senior ministerial class (old) / scholar (old) / bachelor / honorific / soldier / noncommissioned officer / specialist worker

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.

Sherlock Holmes (sh) is meeting the bachelor (士) in the bathroom of the space station (Ø4). Sherlock Holmes is playing a flute (一) for him, and the bachelor is wearing a huge cross (十) around his neck.

Loading...

Comments

There aren't any comments yet.

How to pronounce 士

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.

= sh initial

Sh is for Sherlock Holmes.

By Matthias • updated 2 months ago
+ Ø4 final

In the space station’s bathroom.

By Matthias • updated 2 months ago

士 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
Loading...
Loading mnemonics…
= y + Ø1
one / single / a (article) / as soon as / entire; whole; all; throughout / "one" radical in Chinese characters (Kangxi radical 1) / also pr. [yao1] for greater clarity when spelling out numbers digit by digit
Loading...
Loading mnemonics…

Characters with 士 as component

= ji + Ø2
lucky / giga- (meaning billion or 10^9) / surname Ji / abbr. for Jilin Province 吉林省[Ji2 lin2 Sheng3]
Loading...
Loading mnemonics…
zhì = zh + Ø4
aspiration / ambition / the will
Loading...
Loading mnemonics…
zhì = zh + Ø4
sign / mark / to record / to write a footnote
Loading...
Loading mnemonics…

Words with 士

show 392 more
lady / madam / CL:個|个[ge4],位[wei4] / Miss / Ms
doctor / court academician (in feudal China) / Ph.D.
soldier / CL:個|个[ge4]
Sentences with 士
wèi
shì
men
 
 
gěi
bǎng
lai

Want to remember 士 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.

shì

member of the senior ministerial class (old) / scholar (old) / bachelor / honorific / soldier / noncommissioned officer / specialist worker

Prompt snippets

No snippets yet.

AI Images

No AI images generated yet.