Mnemonic comic for

Translation

shī = sh + Ø1: to lose / to miss / to fail

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 (sh) locked himself out of the space station (Ø1)! He lost (失) his key (𠂉)! After he was floating in front of the space station for an eternity, a robot (大) came by with a lost+found box (失) which contained his lost key.

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How to pronounce 失

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
+ Ø1 final

In front of the space station.

By Matthias • updated 2 months ago

失 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
Character component without intrinsic meaning
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dài = d + ai4
see 大夫[dai4 fu5]
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= d + a4
big; large; great / older (than another person) / eldest (as in 大姐[da4 jie3]) / greatly; freely; fully / (dialect) father / (dialect) uncle (father's brother)
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丿
piě = pi + e3
radical in Chinese characters (Kangxi radical 4) / see 撇[pie3]
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= fu + Ø1
husband / man / manual worker / conscripted laborer (old)
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= fu + Ø2
(classical) this, that / he, she, they / (exclamatory final particle) / (initial particle, introduces an opinion)
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Characters with 失 as component

zhì = zh + Ø4
book cover
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dié = di + e2
name of poisonous snake in ancient text
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Words with 失

show 340 more
to be missing / to disappear / unaccounted for
disappointed / to lose hope / to despair
to be defeated / to lose / to fail (e.g. experiments) / failure / defeat / CL:次[ci4]
Sentences with 失
zhè
yàng
wèi
miǎn
cháng
shī

Want to remember 失 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.

shī

to lose / to miss / to fail

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