Mnemonic comic for

Translation

= w + Ø2: surname Wu / area comprising southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and Shanghai / name of states in Southern China at different historical periods

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: the water buffalo from Wu.

Willy Walrus (w) holds a big mandarin (口) in his hands to prepare it in the space station’s kitchen (Ø2). The water buffalo (吴) sees it and begins to pant heavily, slightly in panic. Fortunately there is an angel (天) around to calm him down and let him know that it’s not the sun he’s fearing.

Loading...

Comments

There aren't any comments yet.

How to pronounce 吴

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.

= w initial

Wu is for Willy Walrus.

By Matthias • updated 2 months ago
+ Ø2 final

In the space station’s kitchen.

By Matthias • updated 3 months ago

吴 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
kǒu = k + ou3
mouth / classifier for things with mouths (people, domestic animals, cannons, wells etc) / classifier for bites or mouthfuls
Loading...
Loading mnemonics…
tiān = ti + an1
day / sky / heaven
Loading...
Loading mnemonics…

Characters with 吴 as component

= yu + Ø3
big
Loading...
Loading mnemonics…
= w + Ø2
happy / used in historical names
Loading...
Loading mnemonics…
= w + Ø4
to impede / to delay / variant of 誤|误[wu4]
Loading...
Loading mnemonics…

Words with 吴

show 17 more
lit. head in Wu and tail in Chu (idiom); fig. close together / head-to-tail / one thing starts where the other leaves off
the sky hangs low over the Yangtze, empty as far as the eye can see (idiom); nothing to see to the broad horizon
Sunwu county in Heihe 黑河[Hei1 he2], Heilongjiang
Sentences with 吴
吴 currently does not appear in any sentence.

Want to remember 吴 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.

surname Wu / area comprising southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and Shanghai / name of states in Southern China at different historical periods

Prompt snippets

No snippets yet.

AI Images

No AI images generated yet.